Posted on 12/06/2010 8:44:38 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
BRISTOL — America’s most popular radio talk show host, Rush Limbaugh, blasted Bristol the other day for supposedly making off with some of the $3.3 trillion in loans given to businesses by the Federal Reserve during the recession.
While the charge is false – even absurd given the city’s paltry place in the financial arena – Limbaugh didn’t stop there.
He described Bristol to his millions of listeners as nothing more than ESPN.
“That’s all that’s there: ESPN and a couple of cheap hotels,” Limbaugh said on his nationally syndicated show Thursday.
That was more than enough to stir Bristol’s mayor, Art Ward.
Ward fired off a note Friday demanding an apology from Limbaugh to the people of the city he slurred with his “erroneous venom.”
“I insist that you render us all an apology for your characterization of the city as only having ESPN and a few cheap hotels,” Ward said.
“We are extremely proud of our community, being the home of ESPN, being hard working, patriotic people, with the fifth largest veterans population in the state of Connecticut,” Ward said, then mentioned that Money Magazine recently cited the city as one of its Top 100 in which to live.
“We have a national, state and city pride which is second to none and take exception to your callous, irresponsible characterization of our home,” Ward said.
Limbaugh could not be reached for comment late Friday or Saturday.
On the show, Limbaugh talked extensively about stories in a variety of newspapers about companies that got federal loans during the credit crunch at the start of the recession, most of them big players on Wall Street or the world of commerce.
After Limbaugh pointed out that General Electric got about $116 million in loans, he added that “even the California State Teachers Retirement System got some of this money.
The city of Bristol, Connecticut, General City Retirement Fund got some of this money.”
The talk show giant said that both retirement funds were “going to the Federal Reserve and borrowing money.”
That simply isn’t true.
“The city of Bristol did not receive any of the monies which you were alluding to us receiving along with General Electric,” Ward told Limbaugh
What the city’s retirement fund actually did was something quite different.
The head of the city’s Retirement Board, T.J. Barnes, who also heads Bristol’s Republican Party, said the city took advantage of the chance to invest some of its surplus pension money in a new federal program aimed at making more credit available to business.
The city put money into the program, he said, in the hope of making a profit for its already flush pension accounts.
Barnes said that Bristol didn’t get one penny from the government as a loan or a grant. It merely made some money by investing in the program – and could have come up short had things worked out differently.
Barnes said that Limbaugh was wrong in including Bristol among loan recipients, though he blamed confusing news stories for misleading the radio guru.
It isn’t clear whether Limbaugh has ever been in Bristol.
For a brief time, he was a commentator for ESPN, but resigned in 2003 after many people thought one of his remarks about NFL quarterback Donovann McNabb was racist.
It doesn’t sound that bad. I think the Bristol Mayor could have said nothing and nobody would have really made much of it. Now that he made it into a fight, it will be all over the media. Sometimes it is better to say nothing at all, Mr. Mayor.
Rush will be on in few minutes...should be fun show as he responds to this.
Thankfully, the LSM learned their lesson with McNabb and don’t bend over backwards anymore to see a black man succeed.
Oh wait ..
Bristol backed Democrat Obama by an overwhelming margin in 2008. Obama won 61% of Bristol voters, easily defeating McCain in every part of the city. Results showed that Zero racked up a staggering landslide in Bristol in every single precinct.
There are 24,886 households in Bristol at last count, of which 49.6% are married couples living together. 11.5% have a female householder with no husband present, and 35% are non-families (!).
Bristol brags about having the 5th largest veteran population in Connecticut in order to justify federal handouts. Again, the burg's population is only 61,000 men, women and children. Be still, my bleeding heart.
Leni
“I suspect that the Mayor of Bristol, Conneticut saw an opportunity to bolster the city’s tourism by taking offense and thus garner some free publicity off of Limbaugh.”
Hey, they gotta fill those cheap hotels somehow! :)
Bristol, because ... we’re just that much better than Bridgeport.
Change ‘Quarterback’ to ‘President’ and lookee heeerrrrr fellas! We deja vuja all over again!
He passed out after choking at a UConn Football-watching party Saturday night and had to be placed on a ventilator.
From The Bristol Press:
Mayor Ward in medically induced coma after choking
Oops. Sometimes if you live off of news stories, you’ll get burned when those news stories get things wrong.
Still, I bet Rush apologizes — he usually corrects things when he’s been misled by stories and used them in his show.
While I like Art Ward, I lived in Bristol from 1993 to 2009
Industry is GONE from Bristol. They also are rebuilding the highway through town for all the traffic, not sure how many local people are employed there, but that is all the big business going on in Bristol!
There was an AC Delco plant there, GONE 10 years ago
The mall downtown was torn down due to lack of business
ESPN is the largest employer in town, and most people are from other places originally
P&W engines used tobe made next own over but that has been closed 15 years now
Bristol ust aint got a lot going for it, and Limbaugh is partially right, an outsider might describe it just like he did: just a few cheap hotels and ESPN.
oh please
i lived there for almost 20 years and just moved out 14 months ago
there is NO GANG problem in Bristol
It is just a lower middle class town, a former great town that lost it’s lifeblood factories, that’s all
it is actually a beautiful town in most places
I lock my doors when I drive through there like most cities in CT. Isn't ESPN outside the main city?
Their dem senator, whose name escapes me, was just defeated by a personal friend, JASON WELCH, and Fundamentalist Born Again Christian!
I love it when a plan works out! :)
It was the worst defeat in Connecticut for dems this past election. And in some cases, the only defeat for the dems.
Goodness, if BRISTOL scaes you, you must be having heart attacks in new Britain and Hartford!
Oh man. I seriously hope he will be fine. Even the letter he wrote to Rush was not bad enough to hope for something like this. Prayers to him.
I am from Connecticut. Bristol really isn’t much, but that’s part of the reason why ESPN located there. Who wants to pay Fairfield County or big city prices for real estate for scads of big satellite dishes?
I used to watch the Colonel Clown show that was headquartered at Lake Compounce Amusement Park in Bristol (sponsored by Mucke’s frankfurters). Route 6 is a crummy road to drive on.
It is not a dump like most of the big cities in CT now are (New Haven, Hartford, Bridgeport, Waterbury, Meriden), but it also doesn’t have any of the resources of those cities (Hartford Atheneaum, Yale, PT Barnum Museum, fantastic churches).
Did he dispute any of Rush’s claims?
What was Rush lying about?
The truth is ALWAYS a valid defense.
Art Ward is a Vietnam era Marine, Combat veteran, too. I have had only one dealing with him and he was an okay guy!
Bristol aint that bad, but it is not a place to move in that has a future since the factories closed down.
and Most of Connecticut is ending up that way...
My My, aren’t we the touchy one Steve!
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