Friday evening, Mark Levin had a caller, a Jim from Stratford, Connecticut, who was an immigrant from Scotland. What he said about the welfare state in Great Britain was most interesting, and doesn’t really need any comment, so I’ll just post a transcript of what he said:
“I moved here from Scotland about 25, 30 years ago, and everything that this President Obama is doing to the United States he’s doing it intentionally. I don’t see how any rational person could actually sit back and say, ‘Well, he doesn’t know any better. He’s trying.’ If you just closed your eyes and someone described everything that this guy is doing, you would think that you were in the Cold War Europe. I mean, literally, that’s exactly what he’s doing. As a matter of fact, if all these people think that what he’s doing is great, move to Britain. They’d be glad to have you.”
Mark: “You know what, Jim, I view this as our effort to achieve 1957 East German status.”
Jim: “Well, Mark, if you don’t mind me saying, I actually had the pleasure, if you will, of going to a soccer game in the old East Berlin, and the restrictions of just travelling to see a soccer game were so amazing that the fans couldn’t even cheer. Even the team that I went to support, we couldn’t cheer. That’s how bad it was. And this guy’s doing exactly the same thing.
“You mentioned the NLRB [National Labor Relations Board] – the things that happen in California. I’ve got uncles and cousins who have never worked a day in their life. They’ve got free health care. They get unemployment every week for as long as they want. And the back end of that – free health care. My father just passed away last month. He literally was told that his life was not worth – they didn’t say it just like that but his life was not worth the cost-benefit to the state.”
Mark: “This is in Scotland?”
Jim: “He actually lived in England. And my mother still lives there and my brother.”
Mark: “I’m sorry you lost your father. But this is the state of the place, now, isn’t it?”
Jim: “It’s unfortunate. I mean, one of my uncles, a master mechanic, wouldn’t take a job around the corner from his house because he made more money being unemployed, because he didn’t have to pay taxes.”
Mark: “So unemployment is never-ending, there, isn’t it as I understand?
Jim: “No, I mean, they actually came out with a thing in the early 80s called a youth training scheme so that they could put a nice shine on the youth that were unemployed, and what they basically did was, instead of giving them, let’s say, $100 a week for being unemployed, they gave them $105 a week to work in someone’s garden or to paint for a year with a company. And then at the end of the year they went back on the dole. I mean, he’s, this guy, this Obama is doing everything just like Britain. And it frustrates me because, as you can imagine, I came here when Reagan was in office and America, as it was the greatest country in the world. He’s intentionally doing everything he can to ruin it.”
Mark: “I agree, Jim. Well, thank you, my friend, I appreciate your information. God bless you, sir.
“He’s quite right. He’s quite right.”