By MARC McDONALD
The OxyMoron, Rush Limbaugh, is always bitching and moaning about welfare recipients (and, indeed, he slams any working person who gets any kind of assistance from the government).
Limbaugh's hysterical screeds about the evils of "welfare" seem to get more extreme with each passing year. Indeed, on Sept. 1, 2005, Rush even blamed "the welfare and entitlement thinking of government" for the humanitarian disaster that hit New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
But note that Rush only has a problem with poor people who get welfare. Exempt from his criticism are the rich, the politically-connected, and the corporations, who really collect most of the welfare in this country.
Indeed, the military war profiteers get vastly more welfare than all America's poor people combined. I mean, how many billions of dollars in closed, no-bid contracts did Halliburton alone receive in the Iraq War? And they're merely one of the pig-like, greedy corporations with their snouts at the trough of the bloated, wasteful Military Industrial Complex.
Of course, Rush also exempts himself from his screeds about welfare. After all, the Pig-Man gets loads of welfare himself. Indeed, Limbaugh's entire business is dependent on complete and total free usage of the public airwaves that we the people OWN.
Rush and his backers don't pay a penny for using OUR property. The airwaves we own are every bit as much a tangible asset as real estate or gold.
And Rush gets to use it to spread his NeoNazi hate speech for free.
And it's not like Rush's corporate backers are so broke that they couldn't afford to pay at least a small nominal fee to use our airwaves. (After all, these people just recently signed Rush up for a new contract that will pay him an eye-popping $400 million, on top of the tens of millions Limbaugh has already pocketed over the years).
If Rush's free ride on the public airwaves ain't welfare, then nothing is.
And, of course, this isn't the first time in Rush's life that he's gotten a handout from the government. After all, in his 1996 book, Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations, Al Franken noted that Rush once admitted on his radio show that he'd been receiving handouts from the government dole back when he was struggling in the 1980s. And now this fat piece of sh*t has the gall to blast any and all government programs that offer a helping hand to working people.
Oh, and to all you wingnuts who constantly bitch and moan about poor people getting a "free ride" off the taxpayers: obviously, you've never been poor, yourselves. If you were, you'd know that America's skimpy, Scrooge-like social safety net hardly offers much of a helping hand to poor people. We're not living in Sweden, for Chrissakes. The vast majority of poor and working-class people in America get ZERO help from the government. Frankly, if you're poor in America, you're on your own these days.
The fact is, Rush Limbaugh is America's biggest welfare recipient (both in a literal and figurative sense).
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Great post, Marc! I especially thought your second to last paragraph spoke volumes.
The wealthy have been screaming against welfare for the poor since it first came into being. Their shouting volume went up during the Nixon era and again during the Reagan years. The country has been duped into believing the wholly untrue claim that life on public assistance is easy and that recipients are somehow living in luxury. Worse yet, the middle class has been led to believe that welfare recipients are stealing from THEM, when in reality, huge corporations and the wealthy are stealing from everybody with clever tax loopholes and huge unneeded subsidies for their businesses. They also steal from everybody by not raising wages even though worker productivity has shot up tremendously over the past 15 years. The middle class has to stop hating the poor for being poor and getting public help, and BOTH groups should unite and start raising complete holy hell with the corporations and ultra wealthy who are screwing them every day but lying about it or disguising it!
At the basic level, I don't know of any "self-made" people here or anywhere else, because something that was subsidized by the public was almost always at the root of the person's success. These people always want to privatize their profits, but then socialize their losses.
Transportation companies drive their vehicles over public highways. MBAs study and obtain reference books in public libraries, and get their degrees from public universities. Even Internet entrepreneurs are using a system that was set up publicly, with taxpayer money. Under scrutiny, you find that there's almost nobody out there who has made a big score without supporting dollars from the taxpayer, somewhere down the line.
It's a racket that's never going to end. Lardbaugh is just a very public version of it.
Hi Jack, thanks for stopping by:
re:
>>BOTH groups should unite and
>>start raising complete holy hell
>>with the corporations and ultra
>>wealthy who are screwing them
Yes, unity is what it's all about. But, instead, we have the poor and the working class at each other's throat for bogus reasons. It's a dream come true for the wealthy (who incidentally love to pit working people against each other).
The rich have been doing this for many years. Back in the 19th century, they stirred up resentments and get Polish and Irish people at each other's throats, so much so that they'd never join forces in organized labor.
The rich and their goons would spread false stories about how one ethnic group supposedly was plotting to dominate another.
The same thing goes on today, with all the resentments that are stirred up over affirmative action.
Hi Manifesto Joe, thanks for the comment.
re:
>>Even Internet entrepreneurs are
>>using a system that was set up
>>publicly, with taxpayer money
I have to admit, I've benefited myself from this. But, overall, I'd say that I've gotten back very, very little for all the taxes I've paid over the years.
I oppose most of what this government spends money on, including the trillions it spends on immoral wars, as well as the whole Military Industrial Complex racket.
Hell, I even oppose the Prison Industrial Complex racket that costs the taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. If I had it my way, most people who're in prison (particularly for nickel-dime drug offenses) would be released.
On the other hand, I would prosecute white collar criminals much more vigorously. Those are the bastards who deserve to be behind bars.
Even many of the things that I do use that were paid with government money are things that I oppose. For example, I only use the national highway system because of America's appalling lack of passenger trains and public transport. I would prefer to not even own a car, if I had it my way.
All in all, I'd bet money that the average Top 1 Percent wealthy person gets vastly more out of the existence of this government that working people like me ever will. Corporate welfare costs more money than America's skimpy programs for poor and working class people ever will.
Right-wing talk radio is a much more powerful force that many people realize. For example, Limbaugh's audience is around 14 million. That is vastly larger than any newspaper (The Wall Street Journal and USA Today, the nation's biggest papers, each only have around 2 million circulation).
Name one Liberal idea that ever worked. I can't think of one Lib idea that worked.
Liberalism led to the downfall of our great country. It led to our towering deficits. It led to the rise in crime. It led to the breakdown of the family. It led to the weakening of our nation's defenses, which was the cause of 9/11.
Ronald Reagan once said it best: "Government is the problem, not the solution."
In response to the previous poster: speaking of Ronald Reagan, it seems like for a guy who built his career on attacking government, he himself sure did all right by government.
He pocketed $400,000 per year of our money as president. Over 8 years, that comes to $3.2 million. Bear in mind that when you're president, your salary is money that you can put in the bank and keep there (as president, you don't have to worry about things like paying your electric bill, or buying food).
Reagan pocketed millions of taxpayers' dollars as a politician. But, like most Republicans, his attitude was, "I've got mine, screw everyone else."
re:
>>Reagan earned $200,000 per year.
Thanks for the info.
Hmmm, so Reagan "earned" $1.6 million of our tax dollars during his 8 years in the White House (during which time he constantly bashed government and claimed that government can't help anyone).
It seems to me that Reagan himself did all right by government. He pocketed a fortune in OUR tax dollars. And that doesn't even take into account the millions he pocketed from Tokyo for selling out America's manufacturers. (It's a shame the "liberal" media never covered this).
I hope he is roasting in hell right now for all of his crimes (dirty war in Central America, etc.).
Two kinds of people say what "anonymous(the coward)" says:
Liars, and the weak minded rubes who believe their bulls**t.
Reagan was the Beginning of the End for the United States, a bad actor fronting for Corporate America, selling out our ideals, lying through his smiling pearly-whites while the working people of this once-great country took it up the butt.
I have no doubt whatsoever that he's roasting in hell as I type this.
Thanks, Marc, for your courage in putting the truth out there, name and all, while "anonymous" cowards pelt you with their pathetic slings and arrows.
Hi Cunning Runt, I appreciate your kind words.
re:
>>>Reagan was the Beginning of the
>>>End for the United States
This nicely sums up his disastrous time in the White House. It's likely to be the only thing serious historians remember about his time in office.
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