Rush Limbaugh on Garner: The Left Wanted a Powerful State and Here it Is
“I don’t think that things are rosy and perfect in America, but to say that they’re no better, as the mayor of New York said, that’s absurd. We’ve made all kinds of efforts to improve race relations in this country. The 1964 Civil Rights Act, affirmative action, we have bent over backwards. Is it all perfect? No, it’s not. But there’s no acknowledgment of any progress, Chris. If you listen to these people, the president, the mayor of New York, you would think it’s 200 years ago. You would think we haven’t even started working on these problems, and that’s not true. And I think for the president to promote this division as he just did in that clip that you said, and mischaracterize what happened here — he’s talking in large part about Ferguson and what he described did not happen in Ferguson, and what most of the media is describing did not happen in Ferguson, Missouri. There was no ‘hands up, don’t shoot.’ It didn’t happen. And that’s tearing this country apart. We have people to whom the truth is relative. And they’re using whatever power they have to try to redefine the truth for the advance of their own political agenda. And it’s just not productive. And the president taking sides in this in a way that further divides the country, I find reprehensible and very unfortunate ...
What was Eric Garner doing? He was selling cigarettes, loose cigarettes. And the police in New York, because they’re so eager for tax collection, what is being done here with regard to taxes and the state’s desire to collect them no matter what, how many cops were descended on that situation for cigarettes? How many people smoking marijuana did the cops pass by and ignore on the way to Eric Garner? You’ve got $13 a carton, $13 a pack in New York City, over $6 of that is taxes. And the authorities are telling the cops, you go out and you stop that because they’re so intent on collecting tax revenue. I think the real outrage here is that an American died while the state is enforcing tax collection on cigarettes. This is just absurd. And it — you know, people talk about the left, they want a big state, they want a powerful state. Well, here it is. You’ve got the take all of it. If you want a powerful state, there’s your police force acting on demands of the authorities to go out and make sure that every dime of tax is collected particularly from tobacco."
