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Glenn Beck
Bailout Continues on Global Scale; Are We Becoming the Weimar Republic?; ACORN Facing Allegations of Voter Fraud
Aired October 13, 2008 - 19:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GLENN BECK, HOST (voice-over): Tonight, the bailout virus spreads all around the globe. How long before our leaders try to impose the socialist cure? Or have they already done it without us even noticing?
Plus, a new report shows the Obama campaign gave ACORN hundreds of thousands of dollars. This as voter fraud allegations continue to grow against the liberal community group.
And Congressman John Lewis plays the race card. Did he really compare John McCain to segregationist George Wallace? You decide, tonight.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BECK: Hello, America. I know you`re tired, and I`ve got some news that we really have to face together. I`m going to try to -- try to make it easy. It`s making my head hurt.
When I hear people talking about the bailout, the first question that comes to my mind is, oh, really, which one? Every time I turn around, it seems like someone else -- the government, G-7 -- I don`t know, is Ronald McDonald in the government yet? -- is writing some giant Jerry Lewis check, you know, to save somebody`s butt, somebody who should have to live with the consequences of their own bad business decisions. Why are we continuing to pay for this mess?
Here`s "The Point" tonight. These bailouts have got to stop, and they have got to stop now or we`ll be using wheelbarrows of cash to buy loaves of bread. These bailouts are the last bullets that are in our gun, and if they don`t hit the mark, there`s no more money and there`s no time to reload. And here`s how I got there.
Over the weekend, the leaders for the International Monetary Fund and the G-7 nations got together in Washington to coordinate their efforts -- that sounds spooky -- to stabilize the world financial market. One world government conspiracy theorists take note. They ended up with a three- point plan. And here they are.
Point No. 1: keep cash flowing through the financial system, a.k.a., print more money. Recapitalize the banks. Print more money. And restart lending to businesses. Print more money. Gee, all those sound pretty obvious. Why haven`t we been doing them all the time?
Here`s the thing. These ideas all cost money. Buying a new Ferrari sounds like a good fourth idea. You know, I don`t have the cash to pay for it. Big deal. Can you imagine, if you wanted that new sports car so bad, but just declared bankruptcy, I`m completely penniless.
Let me ask you the question. Can you imagine being so overleveraged, so -- so out of cash that you can`t even afford the basics. Only you come home and say, "Honey, honey, honey, I was just at the bank, and I got a whole bunch of more money. Let`s go shopping and stop by and get that Ferrari I`ve always wanted."
This is -- we`re talking trillions of dollars, and it`s a gamble. And these guys are gambling. They`re putting us, you and me, all in. All of our chips are on the table. Are you comfortable with that?
Tonight, America, here`s what you need to know. One of the biggest sticking points with this financial crisis is that banks aren`t lending money to other banks. They`re stuffing it in the proverbial bank mattress. There`s been a run on their banks. Over the weekend, the Fed, who has mishandled this situation, oh, I don`t know, since maybe 1914, finally did the smart thing by deciding to insure the loans from one bank to another. The problem with this idea is, it should have been the first thing they tried and not the last. Instead, they`ve put you and me way out on a limb.
When everybody figures out that these schemes don`t work, and I believe they`ve already figured that out, there`s not going to be any place for us to go but into hyperinflation.
Representative John Culberson is the Republican from Texas.
Congressman, you voted against this bailout bill, I believe, two times.
REP. JOHN CULBERSON (R), TEXAS: Twice.
BECK: Yes. They did it anyway.
CULBERSON: Right.
BECK: But now over the weekend, all of a sudden it`s like, "Oh, yes, you know that thing we talked about in Congress? No, we`re not going to do any of that. But we`re going to take that money, add to it -- right -- and do something entirely different."
CULBERSON: Right.
BECK: When did this happen? Where is this in the Constitution?
CULBERSON: It is unfortunately, probably, constitutional because of the commerce clause, Glenn, but what we`ve done, however, I think the level of authority that we`ve granted the secretary of the treasury could be challenged because it`s so unprecedented.
We`ve literally created a king, Glenn. Secretary Paulson is now King Henry, has complete authority to do whatever he wishes with that $700 billion. We in Congress were told this emergency required that this $700 billion be given to the secretary so he could buy up the toxic debt. And then, you`re right, this weekend he said, "No, never mind. We`re going to nationalize the banks."
BECK: And wait a minute -- the -- well, first of all, nationalizing the banks, do we have that clip? This is me from, I don`t know, three months ago or so. Watch this clip. And this isn`t the first time I said it. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BECK: If you look what our government is doing, they`re talking about, "Ph, it`s too big to fail," or "We should nationalize these." We`re looking at the financial, energy, transportation, and health-care sector.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BECK: I said back then...
CULBERSON: Right.
BECK: And it`s all coming. It`s all coming.
CULBERSON: Right. And how do you stop feeding a shark? I mean, if you feed sharks, they just get hungrier. What`s next? I mean, we`re going to bail out the -- we`re going to nationalize the automotive industry?
BECK: They will.
CULBERSON: California said they don`t have enough money.
BECK: They will.
CULBERSON: There`s no end to this, Glenn. Unfortunately, this is where it ends.
I don`t know if you can see this. This is a $50 billion bank note from Zimbabwe. And if we`re not careful, this is going to become the Weimar Republic.
BECK: It is.
CULBERSON: This is what`s concerned me for years. This is why I burnt out my "no" light on the floor of the Congress, voting against all of these incredible spending programs. And we have to have a revolution in this country at the ballot box and elect rock-ribbed, hard-nosed fiscal conservatives who are going to get this under control and get back control of the government.
BECK: Congressman, is it true that Fannie and Freddie is now getting $40 billion a month -- $40 billion a month to bail out these bad mortgages. That`s an additional $500 billion.
CULBERSON: That`s right. In fact, Glenn, it`s hard to keep track of how many hundreds of billions of dollars have been pumped into not only Fannie and Freddie, but into the investment banking system by the former chairman of Goldman Sachs, Henry Paulson, bailing out these investment banks with our dollars. And as far as I can tell, Glenn, the banks have been burying the money in the backyard.
BECK: I know, I know. They`re holding on to it. Because they know what`s coming. They know what`s coming, and it ain`t pretty.
CULBERSON: And they won`t show each other their real balance sheets.
BECK: Right.
CULBERSON: It`s a real concern to me that the minute we change that mark-to-market accounting rule, we didn`t see a change in the asset sheets of these banks.
BECK: Congressman, I thank you very much. And keep up the hard work.
CULBERSON: We are going to keep it up, Glenn. And thank you for ringing the fire bell on this. And this is too important. We`re going to get this country back. We`re not going to become France without a fight.
BECK: I think we`re already there. Congressman, thank you very much.
More on the madness of this bailout in 30 seconds. Don`t go away.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BECK: I have a lot of people who talk to me offline, if you will. They -- they`ll tell me things they won`t tell anybody else because of their position or, you know, they don`t want to seem crazy or whatever.
I got a call from a friend of mine who is very high placed. He said, "Everybody I know, Glenn, is reading about the Weimar Republic."
And I said, "Oh, jeez, the Loaf-of-Bread-with-a-Wheelbarrow-Full-of- Money Republic?"
He said, "Mm-hmm."
It is what a lot of people believe is coming. Try to buy a book online about the Weimar Republic. You will have a hard time finding some of the books. A lot of them are suddenly gone. Who`s reading them all and why now?
Peter Schiff, president of Euro PAC and author of the "Little Book of Bull Moves and Bear Markets."
Peter, worst nightmare looks like it`s coming -- coming true, because you know, as much as anybody wants to say that we`re borrowing this money, we are borrowing some of this money. But people are also asking for insurance, if you will, on our treasuries, which has never, ever happened before.
We need credit default swaps on our treasuries now to make sure that - - because some people are saying, "I don`t know if they`re good for the money."
We`re printing a lot of this money, aren`t we?
PETER SCHIFF, PRESIDENT, EURO PAC: Well, I think that`s where it`s going to come from. Remember, credit comes from savings. And we blew through most of our savings when the dot com -- dot com bubble crashed. And then we started borrowing a lot of money from the rest of the world.
Wall Street helped us do this with these structured powers, so we tapped into the global savings glut. We borrowed from China and Saudi Arabia and Russia and Japan. But now we can`t pay the money bank, and nobody wants to lend us any more, so they`re trying to recreate it with a printing press. And that`s exactly what happened in Weimar Republic, Germany. That`s what`s happening in Zimbabwe right now.
BECK: When you have -- when you have inflation, let`s just say -- let`s just say that unemployment next year, next summer is maybe 10 percent. And you inflation at what -- what do you project next year, just by the amount of money that we put into the market?
SCHIFF: Well, I think it`s already running a little bit north of 10 percent. I think pretty soon, maybe a year or two down the line, it`s going to be going at least 20 or 30 percent a year. The government won`t admit it, but it will be.
BECK: Right. But they won`t admit it, but we`ll feel it. When inflation is 20 percent, you have unemployment at, you know, at least 10 percent. What happens then? People can`t pay their bills. They can`t pay their mortgages. They can`t pay their credit cards. I mean, the whole thing starts to fold.
SCHIFF: Glenn, they already -- Glenn, they already can`t pay their bills. They already...
BECK: I know!
SCHIFF: And the government, instead of encouraging us to start saving now so we can pay back the debt, they`re trying to encourage us to borrow even more money and spend that.
You know, what`s going to happen, of course, is as inflation starts running out of control and prices start going through the roof, the government again is going to focus on the symptoms and not the disease.
And they`re going to impose price controls on energy, on food, on a lot of other things that are vital, which means shortages, which means long lines, black markets, civil unrest. All this stuff is coming if we don`t stop.
BECK: OK. Peter, let me be just a conspiracy guy here for just a second. Because what drives me crazy is, all these people are so very smart. They know. I mean, I got a call from somebody who`s in the know, and says, everybody is reading about this. Everybody is where. And this is a guy at the highest level of global banking.
Are we being pushed into a global one-financial system? What is happening?
SCHIFF: I don`t know what`s going to happen as far as the global currency, but if you remember the Weimar Republic, they were in trouble because of the reparations from the treaty of Versailles. Huge external liabilities.
BECK: If you`re not -- if you don`t -- if I may take you back one step, they got into a war and decided they didn`t want to finance it with taxes or finance it with bonds. They just decided to run a deficit. That was the first step.
SCHIFF: Right. That sounds very familiar.
BECK: Yes.
SCHIFF: That`s what we`re doing with Iraq. But the thing is, we owe the world probably as much, if not more, than Germany owed, only we didn`t incur this debt fighting a war. We incurred it remodeling our houses and buying cars and television sets and iPods and all these little gadgets that we didn`t need. And now we owe the world trillions, and we`re reaching for the printing press to pay it back.
BECK: And we`re also reaching for a stimulus package, which we have to go to the printing press to get that, too. And all those tax rebates and everything else.
SCHIFF: All of it is coming from a printing press. There`s no more money.
BECK: OK.
SCHIFF: We can`t borrow it any more from the rest of the world, because how can we pay it -- we can`t pay back the money we`ve already borrowed.
BACK: Somebody -- I talked to somebody at church yesterday, and he said, "I was reading something" -- I want you to stick around for a second after the break. I want to talk to you about something else that has been on my mind and apparently, at least according to one of my friends at church, you -- it`s on your mind, as well.
Did the administration hard sell Congress on the bailout by dangling the threat of martial law? What`s all that about? And martial law. Peter just said it. We`re going to talk about it next.
The issue of racism also is rearing its ugly head on the campaign trail. What does a 1960s segregationalist [SIC] have to do with today`s presidential race? Yes, I`d like to know the answer on that one, too.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BECK: Coming up, Barack Obama will cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans when he takes office next January. Sweetness. I mean, unless you`re part of that nasty 5 percent.
Shouldn`t be a problem, you know, to cut taxes in the middle of the largest government spending spree of all time, right? Cutting taxes is a good thing.
Oh, yes, and by the way, he`s going to squeeze out universal health care, as well. That`s the kind of change I`ve been hoping for. I`ll tell you the truth behind the tax plan in tonight`s "Real Story." Don`t miss it.
But first, when people are frightened, they make different decisions than they would when they were feeling safe or secure. Sometimes when that fear is justified, I mean, it`s common sense. But when that fear is manufactured, it feels an awful lot like coercion.
For instance, when the U.S. bailout Bill was trying to be jammed through Congress, some members say there was an organized effort to scare them into signing.
Here is the California Democratic Congressman, Brad Sherman.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. BRAD SHERMAN (D), CALIFORNIA: Many of us were told in private conversations that, if we voted against this Bill on Monday, that the sky would fall, the market would drop 2,000 or 3,000 points the first day, another couple thousand the second day, and a few members were even told that there would be martial law in America if we voted no. That`s what I call fear mongering.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BECK: OK. We`ve called this congressman`s office. He`s not speaking to the press. I wonder if there`s more fear or intimidation going on. Martial law, could it really have happened?
Joining me once again is Euro PAC president and author of -- and author Peter Schiff.
Peter, let`s talk a little bit about martial law. Why would that even be a consideration?
SCHIFF: Well, I don`t think it was a threat if they had rejected the bailout Bill, but I think it is a possibility a few years down the line. We just spoke a little bit about price controls and the effect that they`re going to have.
If we have shortages of food, if we have rolling blackouts. And people are upset, and they`re hungry, and they`re cold, there could be civil unrest. There could be looting, rioting, and that might be the impetus for the government to declare martial law.
BECK: You know, I don`t think you`re a couple of years away from something like that. I mean, honestly, Peter, I mean, look at what`s happening. In a half hour, I`ve got a congressman on about -- about the racism cries. I mean, there are people that are right now so disenfranchised, and I think being encouraged to be disenfranchised on both sides, that at any time this damn thing could break apart.
SCHIFF: Yes. And we`re giving the government so much power. And you know, you give up a lot more civil liberties. When you have martial law and you`ve got the military policing our streets, when you`ve got suspension of habeas corpus, you`ve got curfews, you can`t be out of your house after dark, and they can just pick you up and put you in prison and keep you there indefinitely without charges, and there`s nothing you can do about it?
I mean, we`re giving up one liberty after another, all to protect ourselves from this economic crisis, which needs to happen anyway, but it doesn`t need to be nearly this bad.
BECK: Peter, this is -- I mean, we`re in Crazytown, USA. But my gut tells me that, two years down the road -- let`s just use that number -- this country is not going to look anything like it does today. Our world has changed; it just hasn`t caught up.
SCHIFF: Of course. I mean, we`ve blown way by France already. We`re not going to become France. I`m hoping we don`t become Zimbabwe, but that`s where we`re headed.
BECK: Explain that. Because most people -- most people will say that`s -- I sat with a guy -- I sat with a guy this weekend who`s a good friend of mine. He said, "Glenn, I`ve got to tell you something. Six months ago" -- he`s in the financial business -- he said, "Six months ago, I thought you were crazy." He said, "How did you know?"
And I said, "It`s common sense."
SCHIFF: It is common sense.
BECK: Right.
SCHIFF: And, you know, people think that hyperinflation can`t happen here. Well, you know, the laws of physics works everywhere. If you throw a ball up in the air in Zimbabwe, gravity`s going to bring it back down, just the way it is here.
And economics is a science. There are laws. And it doesn`t matter where you apply them. You`re going to get the same result. So if we follow their monetary policy, that`s where we`re going to go.
We need to replenish our savings. And the government is not letting us do that. The government is forcing spending. They`re force-feeding spending down our throats.
BECK: Peter, do you -- do you remember -- do you remember in the Great Depression -- I mean, not like you or I were there -- but I`ve been doing my homework on the Great Depression the last couple of years. This is what -- exactly what the government did.
In fact, in 1935, they said to companies, "You must spend your money or we tax it all and take it away."
And the companies said, we can`t do that, we won`t have any money for a rainy day. Low and behold, a rainy day came, crash again.
SCHIFF: The left-wing agenda wants us to think that the reason there was a depression was because the government didn`t do anything. That`s not true.
(CROSSTALK)
SCHIFF: There were actually people that were advocating the government do nothing, but they didn`t. They did a lot. Hoover did a lot of things, and he created a lot of damage, and then Roosevelt came in and did even worse stuff.
BECK: Yes, yes. And it goes -- you know, America, go look for the little blue eagle. I remember always seeing that little war eagle. That was price control. That meant -- the government was basically saying, "Do not shop or buy any product without that blue eagle, because they won`t promise to sell it at a certain price." I mean, what kind of country were we living in? And we`re going back.
Peter, thank you very much.
SCHIFF: Thank you.
BECK: Coming up, as a liberal voter outreach program, ACORN continues to deal with allegations of voter registration fraud across several swing states. We look at a new report about certain presidential campaign financial connection to the group. I wonder which one that could be.
And speaking of Obama -- did I just wreck the ending for you? We`ll have more bad news. And the tax cuts, he`s promising 95 percent of America`s going to get one. It`s not going to work. I`ll explain what he really means in just a minute.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BECK: ACORN, or the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, is under investigation in several states. I didn`t see this one coming. I don`t know about you.
They`re suspected of filing fraudulent voter registrations. Bad for them, sure. Not really good for us. Could be worse for presidential hopeful Barack Obama. His campaign donated over $832,000 for get-out-the- vote efforts to Citizen Services Incorporated, an organization closely affiliated with our good friends at ACORN.
John Fund is the editorial writer for the "Wall Street Journal" and author of "Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens our Democracy."
John, let me ask you this. How exactly does one nonprofit like, you know, the Obama campaign, make another donation to another not-for-profit like ACORN? Isn`t that kind of like Jerry`s Kids giving to the United Way?
JOHN FUND, AUTHOR, "STEALING ELECTIONS": Well, the real problem is the Obama campaign misidentified that money. They said it was for event planning and staging and lights.
BECK: Oh, I`m sure it was an honest mistake. He`s just not the accountant I thought he was.
FUND: Of course. It turns out that it was for get-out-the-vote efforts and for registrations.
You see, ACORN is an umbrella organization. They have 129 separate different groups. They have front groups. They have back groups. The joke inside ACORN is that the left hand doesn`t know what the extreme left hand is doing.
BECK: Right. OK. So -- so Barack Obama, he`s been distancing himself now from ACORN. And said, "Well, I" -- didn`t he just call them family, and didn`t he work with ACORN?
FUND: Barack Obama`s Web site says there`s almost no connection between him and ACORN, other than the fact that he was their lawyer. But in reality, he was a trainer for ACORN. He worked with Project Vote, which is a full partner of ACORN now and was closely affiliated with it back in 1992. And he sat on the board of a foundation with Bill Ayers which gave ACORN over $200,000.
BECK: All right. Let me play the ACORN response here. I don`t know, this is somebody from ACORN, making a response. I mean, listen to how, just, whatever. We`re talking about 2,000 fraudulent cards in just Indiana alone. Listen to the response here from ACORN.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, I`m not worried whatsoever. It is a little peculiar that we`ve been doing this for 18 months, we turn them in every two weeks, and I guess they`re trying to make it appear as if all of these just showed up at once.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BECK: So it sounds to me like they`re the victim here.
FUND: Well, ACORN has done this problem in 2002, 2004, 2006. Every two years, they say, "We`re going to clean up our act. We`re going to have better quality control." Well...
BECK: Why aren`t people going to jail, John?
FUND: A few have, but we don`t treat voter fraud nearly as seriously as we should.
The Democratic secretary of state, Ross Miller, you should have him on. He is great. He actually had ACORN raided last week in Las Vegas. ACORN complained and said it was a stunt, that it was designed to suppress minority voting.
The Democratic secretary of state said that`s the equivalent of a bank robber complaining about getting arrested because the police had nothing better to do. He says the integrity of our election is vital to its legitimacy.
BECK: Do you believe we`re going to have a -- a fair election in this country? I can`t believe it. I mean, there`s nothing else -- there`s nothing else to stop believing in.
FUND: Glenn, 40 percent of the country, according to polls, seriously questions whether the votes that end up being cast on November 4 will be counted fairly and accurately and might not be canceled out by people who shouldn`t be voting or voting twice or don`t even exist.
BECK: Unbelievable. John, thank you. The next thing, I`m going to hear is somebody will say, "Hey, Peter Pan can`t fly." What, the peanut butter guy?
Coming up, Democrats in Congress are planning for yet another stimulus package. If Barack Obama takes office, they`re coming right back to work. Yes, the first one worked out so well. I have so many problems with this, I don`t know where to begin. But we`ll try, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BECK: Well, welcome to the "Real Story."
Trillions of dollars in wealth, evaporation; it`s all going away. And it`s natural that most experts are conveniently pointing the fingers at the usual suspects.
Oh, it`s the home foreclosures. It`s the greedy CEOs on Wall Street.
Well, while all of those things are absolutely playing a huge role, there`s something else playing a role that everybody, except the market, seems to have forgotten about -- the presidential election.
The "REAL STORY" is that while investors hate recessions, they hate uncertainty even more and right now we`ve got nothing but uncertainty. There`s uncertainty about corporate earnings, there`s interest rates, but now with Barack Obama`s now seeming inevitable coronation right around the corner, there`s also massive uncertainty about how much worse the policies of a filibuster-proof Obama administration will make things.
The market is always looking ahead, and right now they`re only seeing high unemployment and massive inflation coming next year. They`re also seeing a president whose answer to our problems will be to raise taxes and move money from the rich directly to the poor.
And where are we going to get all of that money? If you don`t think transfers of wealth hurt the economy and prolong the gloom, then ask yourself, why the failure of a few greedy banks and the rich CEOs is wreaking such havoc across the world? One reason, trickle-down economics; it works, unfortunately, it works both ways.
Wealth trickles down, which everybody wants to deny, but so does the loss of wealth that everybody seems to understand. If you haven`t felt this crisis in your own home yet, unfortunately, you will soon.
Barack Obama himself once gave a stirring speech in which the refrain was, "words matter." You might remember that one, because the irony of that speech about the importance of you words was actually plagiarized from Obama`s friend, the governor of Massachusetts.
Anyway, if words matter to Obama so much, then someone should ask, why he insists on using the phrase "tax cut" when talking about his plan for the Treasury to write checks directly to the people who don`t pay any income tax. This is a first, by the way.
If words matter, why not just call that what it really is -- government welfare. Doesn`t sound as sexy anymore, does it?
Yes, stock markets don`t like it either. Investors who are now looking into 2009 and beyond are beginning to figure out that Obama`s pledge to cut taxes for 95 percent of the "working families" is a joke. The truth, which you will find in the fine print, is that he`ll simply change the meanings of the terms.
Gosh, nobody in government has ever done that before.
Instead of calling a check from the federal government welfare, as we do now, he just calls it a tax credit. According to the tax foundation, these tax credits a.k.a. welfare checks will rise from $407 billion a year to over $1 trillion a year in the next decade. If anyone is still unsure whether or not what kind of economic policies does he have and will they help America recover quickly, take a look at your most recent 401(k) statement because the markets have already decided.
Bruce Bartlett is a former Treasury official and author of "Imposter: How George W. Bush Bankrupt America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy." And Stephen Moore is a "Wall Street Journal" economics editorial writer and co- author of "The End of Prosperity."
Bruce, let me start with you.
They`re talking yet again about another stimulus package. The first one didn`t work, Obama says that he wants $60 billion on top of the -- what is it, the other $115 billion stimulus package right after the election. Can we talk sense to anybody here?
BRUCE BARTLETT, TREASURY OFFICIAL FOR PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH: Apparently not. Apparently, there`s no public policy whose failure is so great and so recent that we can`t do it all over again.
Just earlier this year, we had $100 billion tax rebate that was supposed to prevent all of this economic chaos from happening, and it didn`t. We`ve tried this before. Every post-war recession, we`ve had some sort of stimulus package. We`ve tried tax rebates before. They never ever work. I think we`d be better off just saving the money.
BECK: Stephen, Nancy Pelosi came out this weekend, and now Obama has added to this. We`re talking food stamps. We`re talking welfare checks. We`re -- I mean, we are growing the government and there`ll be nobody in the way to stop this. This is what you and I talked about a year and a half ago, is it not? We are at the beginning of the collapse of the dollar when these things really start to kick in.
STEPHEN MOORE, WALL STREET JOURNAL: Well, that`s right, Glenn.
And if government`s spending -- $150 billion more is going to get the economy going, then, my God, we should be living in the Garden of Eden right now, because this is all the government has been doing for the last seven years.
I mean Bruce Bartlett`s book is about this, about how Republicans, and then to some extent Republicans built up this spending. I wanted to go back if I could, Glenn to that point you made about the tax cuts and the welfare. Because you covered it very well and it reminded me of that scene in "Alice in wonderland," where I think it was the mad hatter who said, words mean whatever I want them to mean.
BECK: Yes.
MOORE: And this is what Obama has done. He has redefined what a tax cut is to the old welfare payment. So most of these people who he says he`s giving tax cuts to are actually going to be giving a check from the government, they don`t pay any taxes.
BECK: And this is the very first time that this has ever happened, right? That the President of the United States will be signing checks and sending them direct -- I mean you want to talk about bribes or buying people`s votes, this is really it.
MOORE: Well, actually, we had the old welfare state and we reformed it. It was one of the few really good things Republicans did in the mid- 1990s. What they`re doing is recreating the old welfare state, but now they`re calling those welfare benefits tax cuts. Some people say, oh, that sounds good to me.
BECK: So Bruce, we have this stimulus package coming out, these rebates. The last time we did this, people saved a lot of it or they spent it in places where it wasn`t targeted and wasn`t really helpful. You should have been saving it in the financials.
But let me ask you this, what would you do if you got a -- and you won`t, by the way -- but if you got a stimulus check in the mail, you got something from the government and they wanted you to spend it, wouldn`t you, in this uncertain economic market, put that right directly in a bank that you couldn`t trust?
BARTLETT: Well, that`s exactly right. And that`s what most people do with their checks. Maybe what we should do is instead of sending checks, send them coupons that they could use at Wal-Mart that run -- that have an expiration date, where you have to spend the money. I mean, that would make more sense if you believe that spending causes prosperity --
MOORE: Actually, some of the Congressmen have actually proposed that idea. Send gift cards rather than --
BECK: No, no, you know what? That would benefit the evil Wal-Mart that everybody in Congress seems to hate.
MOORE: But you know another point, Glenn that you make, in your monologue. I do think there is a lot of risk aversion out there right now. And people see Barack Obama saying, well, if I become President, the first thing I`m going to do is raise the capital gains tax, raise the dividend tax, raise income taxes.
That`s got to be bearish for stock markets. And I do think, I`m not blaming this on Barack Obama, but I do think all of his talk about raising taxes on investment is sapping down this economy, and making it worse.
BECK: Here`s the good news, and you can disagree with me if you want, it isn`t going to let, but high taxes won`t last long, because you can`t do that in this economy. You can`t do that in any economy. But especially this economy --
MOORE: Herbert Hoover tried it and so did Franklin Roosevelt and may for the present work.
BECK: But we had a gold standard.
MOORE: Right.
BECK: I had a guy tell me this weekend, he`s one of my deep throats; he`s deeply into what`s going on. And he has talked to me now for the last couple of years, and he has said, Glenn, look, I`ll tell you what`s going on, you know. And he`s been optimistic. He`s telling me now that everybody in his circle is reading about the Weimar Republic, because he`s at that level. He`s standing with everybody who`s involved.
And you know what, there`s no way you can pump this kind of money into this system and have it last. We are going to have massive inflation. Plus, coupled with spending, where is the American public that I grew up with that says, enough is enough. What the hell are you doing to my country?
MOORE: Well, the good -- there`s one piece of good news Glenn. A poll came out last week asking America, who do you blame more for this financial crisis. And people didn`t blame so much Wall Street investment greed or banks, they blamed Washington. And good for the American people because they pinned the blame right on who it belongs.
BECK: Well, here we go with the rebate check. How long -- Bruce, do you have any idea -- have you ever sensed the country in the place that it is right now, where it is so disconnected from our politicians. I mean, I don`t think -- I don`t think anybody in this country believes in the policies of the Democrats or the Republicans. I`ve just never seen anything like it. Nobody trusts anybody.
BARTLETT: Well, I don`t think we`ve seen it in our lifetime, and that`s for sure. You really have to go back to 1929, 1930 to the origins of the Great Depression. And I think that our policy makers recognize that there is a parallel here and they`re trying to move heaven and earth to prevent a deflationary collapse of the financial system.
And you`re exactly right. The risk is that they will pump too much money into the system or not take it back out of the system appropriately and they`ll stay too easy for too long and you`re absolutely right, we`re right back into the stagflation of the 1970s.
MOORE: Yes, that`s the 1970s again with high rates of government spending and high inflation.
BECK: You guys can say I`m crazy all you want, but you know what, gang, it`s way past the 1970s. Stuff we`ve never seen before.
MOORE: This could be worst than that Glenn, worst than the `70s?
BECK: Worst than the `70s, worst than the `30s as well. Thanks a lot, guys. That`s the "REAL STORY" tonight.
Now, for months I`ve been telling you that you need to prepare yourself. And not for this financial stuff, but for the idiot friends that you have on all of the issues, and not just taxes. This week, in our special series, "Arguments against the Idiots," we focus on the war.
I know you`ve got an idiot friend or two who has been saying, we`re about to get a president who cares about the troops and will bring them home immediately. Sign up for my free email newsletter and get the winning argument for that idiot. And much, much more, it`s completely free and it`s available at glennbeck.com.
Coming up, John McCain compared to George Wallace. Really? Wow. More distractions from the issues? No. We get to the answers next.
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BECK: If you actually thought that we might, you know, make it to Election Day without the race card being played by a high-profile politician, oh, cute. You`re probably watching this show from inside your 19-bedroom house that you bought with an interest-only loan, right?
The surprise this time isn`t that the card`s been played, I mean who didn`t see that coming, it`s who actually played it this weekend at least; congressman and civil rights legend and activist John Lewis. Over the weekend, Lewis released a statement in which he said, and I quote, "What I`m seeing reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history. Senator McCain and Governor Palin are sewing the seeds of hatred and division and there`s no need for this hostility in our political discourse."
During another period in the not too distant past, there was a governor of the state of Alabama named George Wallace who had become a presidential candidate. Wallace never threw a bomb, and he never fired a gun, he created a climate and the conditions that encourage vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights.
You`ve got to be kidding me.
Now, Lewis says, "If you read his statement closely, it was clear that he wasn`t comparing John McCain and Palin to George Wallace." How closely do I need to read it?
Let`s go to our guest Joe Hicks, he`s from the "Joe Hicks" show at KFI radio in Los Angeles, he`s the vice-president of Community Advocates Incorporated. Did you read it closely, Joe? Because seems like it.
JOE HICKS, CONSERVATIVE COMMENTATOR: I read it very carefully, went back and read it again and again and it looks to me it`s not only that he`s playing the race card, but he threw the entire deck at John McCain.
BECK: John McCain --
HICKS: I`ve got to say --
BECK: Go ahead.
HICKS: I`ve got to say, I met John Lewis. This is a guy I admire. This is a guy that literally got hell at the William Pettis Bridge. He got beaten to a pulp during the ride -- the freedom rides. So here`s a guy that I think sees everything through the reference point of that era and can`t get the fact that America`s changed.
BECK: You really think that`s what it is -- I mean, I hope so because here`s a guy that I respect. John McCain even said he`s a guy that he would consult with in the months past. Yet -- what? I mean, I heard John McCain defending Barack Obama.
Look, people are pissed and it has nothing to do with race. When it comes to Barack Obama, it`s not just Barack Obama, man. I want the communists out of my country. I want the people like Nancy Pelosi -- Harry Reid, I don`t even begin to understand you. I want these people out of my Congress. They are destroying our country.
HICKS: Well, that`s right. And it`s got nothing to do with race. And, frankly, John Lewis is known to make these kind of wild statements because the guy sees everything through the prism of race.
And what doesn`t get noticed here, of course, is that people like Madonna do concerts with pictures of Hitler and McCain in the backdrop and nobody`s mentioning the moveon.org code pink, nut cases that are out there, but of course the media jumped all over the last few rallies, claiming it`s some kind of clan extravaganza. It`s just outrageous kind of stuff going on.
BECK: I guarantee you that I`m going to have to -- at some point somebody is going to say, you said communists should be thrown out of the country. And yes, stand by it. You have to defend something like that.
But these guys don`t have to defend, what about that scar on the side of John McCain`s face? They can say whatever they want, which should put the fear of God in every American, because I`m telling you, correct me if I`m wrong, Joe, this guy gets in the office, you disagree with him, you`re a damn racist, no ifs ands or buts.
HICKS: Well, that`s the way of course he set it up. And people like Donna Brazile of course can say things like the Republicans in the party, the white boys, and nobody challenges it. Barack Obama can go on to stump right and make these kind of claims that the Republicans are going to make you afraid of me and tell you that I don`t look like the other people on the dollar bill.
Just outrageously playing the race card, yet nobody really seems to -- that`s ok. That`s fine. You know, it`s a completely double standard here. And it`s not as if -- John McCain has tread on egg shells around the issue of race here. The McCain camp has played it very carefully because they knew that John Lewis was waiting with baseball bats the moment they said anything mildly controversial.
So here you get it, you get this kind of double standard and it`s completely unfair. And I hope that the American people do get it.
BECK: What does an Obama administration -- well, I mean, not even that. How does this -- how does this work out well in the end? It doesn`t.
If McCain wins, it`s because the white people took it away from him, the racists -- whatever. If Obama wins, how do you have a conversation with people who will call you a racist if you disagree with them?
HICKS: Well, Glenn, I think the kind of tactics that have been played by the Obama camp here are something we`re going to have to live with for a quite a while. Listen, if the guy loses, already articles have been written saying, the only reason that Barack Obama lost is because of racism, right.
BECK: God help us if he wins.
HICKS: But even if he wins, people are going to look back and say, look at the nasty campaign the Republicans waged against John McCain.
So there is a legacy here that sets up that I think really means a lot of nastiness we`re going to have to deal with in society moving forward, and that`s really unfair. And the Obama camp opened this wound, and we`ve got to now deal with the ramifications of what this then means. And I`m eternally optimistic on race in America. I think we have moved way beyond that.
BECK: We have.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But the fact that -- so it`s going to be interesting to see where it goes.
BECK: You want to hear right from the horse`s mouth tomorrow, John McCain is going to be on my radio program. Find out all about it. Tomorrow morning he`ll be on my radio program, and you can read about it at Glennbeck.com. We`ll talk about all of this and so much more.
Coming up, wind-power cars; yes, I`m not sure I get it either. But hang in there, we`ll do it next.
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BECK: The fluctuating cost and shrinking supply of oil is a problem for anybody who drives a car. After all, we need fuel for the engines to turn. It`s not exactly like you can run your car on wind. Or can you?
Yes. That is the subject of a new article in the new issue of my magazine called "Fusion," "The World`s going to Hell." And here to talk about is the executive producer of my radio program, Stu Buirguiere. Stu.
STU BURGUIERE, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, GLENN BECK RADIO SHOW: Yes, Glenn.
BECK: We had an idea or you had an idea -- it`s not my idea --I`ve got to give you the credit.
BURGUIERE: Yes, you should. I`m trying to bring progress to this country. I`m trying to make us energy independent, and your magazine, honestly, try to take it apart. Try to bring in some fancy scientist guy to say that it wouldn`t work and it was ridiculous.
BECK: Well, give the idea of the wind-powered car.
BURGUIERE: Well, if you`ve ever driven a car, you can put your hand out and you could go like this -- you`ve done that before.
BECK: Yes.
BURGUIERE: That`s wind. That`s what that is. That`s what powers wind turbines.
BECK: But wouldn`t we all have to live and work at the bottom of a hill?
BURGUIERE: Well, no, you just have to start at the top of a hill. You don`t have to live there. You just have to start at the top of the hill, you get going, the wind power starts going and it powers the super battery in the back. If not, Glenn, you can always -- there is a solar panel on the top.
This is the -- you can see the diagram right now. You can see the super battery in the back. That`s the key to the whole operation.
BECK: Right and what did our scientists say?
BURGUIERE: Well, your quote, unquote "scientists."
BECK: Yes, I believe it was a scientist.
BURGUIERE: Quote, unquote, right. And your quote unquote scientist said something about how the giant wind turbine that would have to be eight feet wide would block your view.
I know that wind-power blocking view is an issue in Cape Cod, but on this car, clearly all you would have to do is make the wind turbine transparent and you would be able to see all that`s going on.
BECK: Oh, so it`s just that easy.
BURGUIERE: It`s just that easy. Problem solved. And this is no shock to me that you, being tied to big oil, would try to shoot this down with a "scientist."
BECK: You`ve been on the phone with Robert Kennedy Jr. again?
BURGUIRE: I have because that`s just doing my homework.
BECK: Okay. You also have a column in this issue.
BURGUIRE: Yes. It`s about the economy in Zimbabwe.
BECK: Yes.
BURGUIRE: Yes, our economy sucks here. But at least you don`t live in Zimbabwe.
BECK: Which is good news.
BURGUIRE: Yes, it`s very bad there; they`re estimating inflation at over a billion percent. So it`s a disaster there. And actually what I`ve decided to do here, this is a television first, never been done. To make someone the first TV billionaire, I have here right now a $100 billion bill, this is official currency from Zimbabwe.
BECK: Just look at that; $100 billion.
BURGUIRE: Yes, it`s worth about 32 cents here in America.
BECK: Yes.
BURGUIRE: But I would like to give you the $100 billion bill from Zimbabwe.
BECK: I`m a billionaire.
Reminder, you can get both of these articles and much more in "Fusion" magazine. Order right now at Glennbeck.com.
From New York, good night, America.
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