In the tax debate that is ongoing, yesterday Sean Hannity took a call from a listener who was demanding to know how many jobs Hannity created. Hannity replied by reeling off the names of people connected directly to his radio and television shows… Elisha, Linda, Sweet Baby James etc.
But there’s something else at work here that seems to have escaped the listener’s attention. I listen to “The Sean Hannity Show” at 3 p.m. in the afternoon on WSBA Newsradio, which broadcasts from York, Pennsylvania, at 910 on the AM dial. Out of curiosity this morning, I called WSBA’s program director Jim Horn and asked an obvious question:
Does WSBA make money from airing “The Sean Hannity Show”?
Answer from Jim: Yes.
While giving me numbers is a violation of company policy, Jim explained what the caller to Hannity’s show seemed not to understand. WSBA — and presumably all other commercial stations — makes its money and hence pays the salaries of its employees by selling advertising. “The Sean Hannity Show” brings in money to WSBA as does every other program the station airs, not surprisingly including its local “York’s Morning News” program featuring Jim, Mark McKenzie, and longtime star Gary Sutton — a show I have been on. That money goes towards paying WSBA employees. And those employees have what are called … “jobs.”
Does Sean Hannity make money for WSBA? Is that true, I asked Jim? “Yes,” he replied, “it really is.”
On the same track, this equation is somehow just impossible for New York Congressman Anthony Weiner to understand. Weiner was on the Hannity TV show last night and the resulting exchange between Hannity and Weiner was illustrative. Hannity, himself a New Yorker, kept making the point that when you toted up the federal income tax, the state income tax, property tax and so on you could be paying as much as 55% of your income in taxes. Weiner kept dodging, saying this meant Hannity wanted no taxes paid (not only untrue but silly) and complaining that his (Weiner’s) “middle-class” constituents are under financial duress. He also attacked News Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch, again obviously, is one large employer in the New York area, his company supplying good private sector jobs at places like Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post.
As it happens, most of my extended family lives, as does Hannity, on Long Island. Weiner’s Brooklyn district is, of course, part of Long Island. The expense for middle class families living on Long Island is incredible, and in fact it has started to catch up to its overburdened residents with many fleeing for less expensive parts south like Florida or North Carolina. The reason it is so expensive for Weiner’s constituents — for anybody living on Long Island — is that Anthony Weiner and his fellow Democrats insist on greedily making government at all levels bigger and bigger and… yes… bigger again. Gutting the finances of his constituents to pay for all of this. Then looking the camera in the eye with a straight face to say he’s fighting for the middle class.
Weiner is not unlike the arsonist who sets the fire and then shows up dressed as a fireman to get credit for trying to put the fire out.
The perfect example of this right this second is the 1,924 page, earmark-stuffed “Omnibus Spending Bill” sponsored by Democrats that they are in haste to jam through the Congress — right now. Costing over $1 trillion. .
Does Weiner see any connection between all this money and the squeeze on Weiner’s middle-class constituents? A squeeze that he himself is responsible for? Of course not.
Meanwhile, WSBA radio, far from Hannity’s studio, will be able to meet its payroll in part thanks to local advertisers eager to sponsor Sean Hannity’s show.
Not a dime of government money involved.
Is it any wonder Americans are furious at “Greedy Government” Democrats like Anthony Weiner? He should be ashamed.
But, alas, he’s shameless. And he and his liberal allies will keep gutting the middle class until they are rendered a minority. Which, in the House, Weiner will soon be.
January can’t come fast enough.
