Carl Gibson gives Rush Limbaugh a call to correct him on the issue of US job creation. "When I called Rush to correct the record, I reminded him that the private sector is still hiring like clockwork while Republicans are killing public-sector jobs with relentless budget cuts."
Carl Gibson called in to Rush Limbaugh to correct him about US job creation. (photo: Independent UK)
"Government Doesn't Create Jobs"
09 November 11
Reader Supported News | Perspective
onservative politicians and pundits love to parrot that patently false statement as many times as they can, despite some of those same politicians getting their paychecks from ... the government. For example, Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) oversaw 47% of all government jobs created in his own state between 2007 and 2010, while he was in charge. Public employee Rick Scott (R-FL) has handed out 15,000 pink slips to his fellow public employees since he's been governor, with the nerve to lament about Florida's rising unemployment in the same breath. Though in his defense, Rick Scott now says he doesn't have to create any jobs. This is surprising, considering Scott's campaign slogans of "Let's get back to work," and "Jobs, jobs, jobs."
Congressional Republicans (re: public employees) aren't any different. They've shamelessly voted down creating hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs for their own constituents - like teachers, police officers and firefighters - because of a 0.5% tax surcharge on incomes exceeding $1,000,000. Republicans claim they'll outright refuse raising taxes on anyone during the recession, yet Republicans have come out in favor of raising taxes on Americans lucky enough to even have a job.
So cue Rush Limbaugh, the de facto leader of the Republican Party, taking to the golden EIB microphone to tell his millions of listeners that it's the private sector, not the government, that does all the job creation. Now, he's partially right in that the latest lackluster jobs report showed 104,000 private-sector jobs gained and 24,000 jobs lost in the public sector. Yet his claim that providing public-sector jobs somehow harms the private sector is the epitome of economic illiteracy.
As a small business owner myself, the thing holding me back from creating jobs in this economy isn't taxes or regulation, but slow demand. Whether private or public sector, when more people are out of work in a consumer economy, demand for goods and services inevitably goes down. And with less demand, businesses have no choice but to lay off workers. We need jobs to fully recover, but jobs won't come about until demand picks up. Demand won't pick up until people have money to spend. So why are our leaders hell-bent on cutting public-sector jobs when we need them most?
75 years ago FDR put 8.5 million Americans to work rebuilding our cities with an $11 billion investment, or $1.7 trillion adjusted for inflation. The jobs created through the Works Progress Administration put nearly a quarter of America's unemployed back to work in the middle of a crippling depression. During the WPA's 8-year stint America's unemployment rate decreased from 20% to 4%. We could generate the revenue for a similar jobs program by simply levying a $0.03 tax on speculative Wall Street transactions, something embraced by everyone from the Occupy Wall Street movement to Bill Gates. How's that for public-sector job growth?
When I called Rush to correct the record, I reminded him that the private sector is still hiring like clockwork while Republicans are killing public-sector jobs with relentless budget cuts. Rush flipped out, hurled a few ad hominem attacks my way, and hung up.
Me: If George Bush wrote a jobs bill, and it happened to increase taxes on millionaires by a half-percentage point to create 450,000 jobs, would you support that bill?
Rush: No, because there's no ... it's impossible. There's no federal spending that creates private-sector jobs ... There is no way that government spending is gonna increase hiring at any private-sector firm. It isn't possible. You cannot take money out of the private sector - you just can't - and have people hired. It just doesn't work that way.
Me: Well actually, the last few jobs reports, Rush, the private sector had created jobs in line with what's expected in an economic recovery. The real job losses have been in the public sector, because of crushing budget cuts -
Rush: You know, I have to -
Me: - all this bill would try to do is relieve some of that.
Rush: If I were you, I would be embarrassed. You are such a tool. You are a mind-numbed robot, programmed to spew a bunch of absolute garbage. Illogical garbage. You're just flat-out wrong, embarrassingly so. Reading from a script! Incapable of critical thinking on your own. You're a sponge. And you're soakin' up stuff from the wrong side.
You can view the Dittocam's record of our discussion below. And check out Media Matters' dissection and fact-checking of the whole conversation here.
Carl calls Rush Limbaugh as "Keith from Galveston, Texas."
Carl Gibson, 24, of Lexington, Kentucky, is a spokesman and organizer for US Uncut, a nonviolent, creative direct-action movement to stop budget cuts by getting corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. He graduated from Morehead State University in 2009 with a B.A. in Journalism before starting the first US Uncut group in Jackson, Mississippi, in February of 2011. Since then, over 20,000 US Uncut activists have carried out more than 300 actions in over 100 cities nationwide. You may contact Carl at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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Please expand on y'r rhetoric. I'm a bit slow on the uptake these days; seriously. Just flesh it out a wee bit so it is worthy of debate -a device Limp-blech avoids like the black death!
It does seem to be true that if you repeat something often enough people will believe it. This worries me.
I don't want to make this too long, but here is a great quote from a recent novel (this observation was just an aside within the context of the story). "Like most of his kind [extreme conservative wing of the Republican Party], his views on federal government could best be summarized as 'keep it as small as possible unless it's convenient for me and my friends to have it otherwise, and as long as I can still be part of it and stick my nose in the federal trough'; or, to put it another way, it's all waste except for the part that benefits me."
Does anyone happen to have a roll of duck tape - I can think of a good use for it.
No Paul, he is not ignorant; the correct word is STUPID!! He is the repugs' "public poison pellet" for those who are mindless enough to believe him (and there are quite a few, sadly). The mammoth-sized money-whore knows FULL WELL what he is doing! LYING TO NO END! I can describe RL in three simple words; GREAT FAT FOOL!!!! 'Nuff said, for now.
I'd also like to see if Rush will accept being on Medicare or will take Social Security from the days he made less than the cap.
I second DPM's comment above that we ought to get rid of Rush the way we eventually got rid of Beck. Rush is a lot more entrenched and doesn't pander to the crazy in the same way that Beck did, so dislodging him will likely prove to be more difficult. But sometimes difficult things to do are best done without worrying about how long it will take, as in civil rights, GLBT equality, women's liberation, etc. You just get started down the path and eventually you'll find that the landscape has shifted. I would like to see a landscape without Limbaugh's bloated shadow casting darkly across it.
However, this article is quite lame; and does nothing to challenge the character of the PHONY left/right debate, (i.e. played out between the hypocrites in the Democratic and republican parties).
The writer talks about FDR investing a huge amount of money during the depression; but he neglects to remind us that FDR BORROWED this money from private banks, (AT INTEREST!!).
It was a temporary rescue of monopoly capitalism, passing the bill onto future generations. Now we are that future generation and the status quo wants "its" money back.
This whole "debate" about "government-created jobs" is going nowhere because even Dems are buying into the slogan of "deficit reduction." They want our social-security.
Rather than more "gov't investment" (a temporary ruse at best) we need to simply overthrow the one war-party with two faces.
Then you'll see Limbaugh squirm like a baby with a 40lb diaper.
One of my friends divorced her husband because she just couldn't take having to listen to Rush anymore because it would get her ex so angry. He was retired career LE and was quite scary when all foamin' at the mouth ditto heading.
There is very little if any, "Private Sector" because they receive more tax dollars per capita than does the Public Sector as appears to be evidenced by where the money is concentrated and the cost benefits of their output.
Let us make the Private Sector really private. Take away all government subsidies, make them pay market price, with royalties, for all the technology that is discovered and invented by use of government funds, and institutions, make them pay for all the pollution and damage they cause on our infrastruction and the environment....
Let there be an import tax on every item they ship back to this country from their outsouced jobs.
Elizabeth Warren eloquently shattered the private sector myth when she said that no one got rich by them selves.
Therefore, "Lifting youself up by your own booth straps" , is an egotistical myth.
Republicans who are "PUBLIC" or OVERNMENT" employees , resign your government jobs and go to work, in an unveiled transparent position, in your exhalted "Private Sector".
I hope we can assist you in this effort in 2012 or eariler.
Thanks again Carl!
Thats what the right wing doesnt understand, hes an idiot and a liar! Making money off of their stupidity.
NEVER EVER VOTE REPUBLICAN!!!
Ahem. What about all the jobs at private firms creatd by massive defense spending, Rush? Don't they count? Do you think the government owns these companies?
And if it works with military spending, why wouldn't it work with civilian spending?
This gasbag and others like him don't have a clue.
Are these not jobs Mr. Limbaugh?
This doesn't even take into account all of the private firms that benefit from all of the war lust either which several other responses have touched on above.
Be shocked at nothing Limbaugh says or does. Truth has nothing to do with his mission. Hate mongering and hypocricy are his stock-in-trade. His job is simply to keep the lies endlessly echoing back and forth, just as for decades the industry-owned Tobacco Institute repeated the lie that cigarettes don't cause cancer. It only mattered that regulators were held at bay and smokers kept smoking.
Like smokers looking to their nicotine vendors for reinforcement, his followers will believe whatever he says, no matter how absurd; it is convenient, comfortable, and gratifying for them to do so.
If you think "it" couldn't happen here, think again. The architects and the actors are already in place, waiting for their cue. A cue that Rush Limbaugh is only too happy to deliver.
The contractor in question was very much entrenched Republican at the top level, and held the attitude that in point of fact, NARA's role in any decision making should have been negligible, and were there solely to rubber-stamp any and all decisions that the contractor made. After five years and three reboots, the contract expired. The software system built had been scaled back to a tenth of its original functionality, was incapable of handling the volume, and cost $2.2 billion dollars. When NARA tried to protest, the contractor's pet (Republican) senators would bring out the canard that the public sector doesn't create jobs.
The irony was that the public employees at NARA were actually well on their way to creating a shadow system that DID do what they needed, at 1/1000th the cost, before the contractor got wind of it and had it shut down.
It is not that the public sector isn't perfectly capable of creating good jobs that enhance the general economy, it is that the private sector is terrified that they will lose the profits from providing shoddy services and hiring cheap labor to pad the books. It's not just banks.
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