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July 28, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:26
July 28, 2005, Thursday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
And welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Roger Hedgecock out here in San Diego at KOGO Radio, and thank you for allowing me to join you.
Thank you, Rush, for allowing me to fill in today.
Rush off on vacation, of course, back on Monday.
Walter Williams here tomorrow, and uh today a lot to do.
Let me start this way, and we have more reaction on the state of the uh police readiness to talk about uh later today.
The United States Senate has acted in some important bills, including CAFTA, I want to talk about.
The Bush record of achievement in Congress continues, and it is going to benefit you, and I want to talk about that.
Uh Castro marking an anniversary.
Will he soon fall?
We'll get into a little bit more of that.
We're not paying attention to Castro when we should.
Uh let's get to the top story today, though, and that's of course the uh shuttle.
The shuttle um situation is uh well tense this morning.
The uh remaining shuttles have been grounded.
The shuttle which is up there is uh successfully connected to the space station.
It apparently doesn't have major damage, but questions remain as to whether science or politics are controlling the processes in NASA.
Is it science or politics?
Would NASA rather increase the risk of death to our astronauts or anger the green lobby?
Now I raise that question today because of the specifics of what has happened and happened again.
I say again because even though Columbia was brought down in 2003 in that tragedy.
2003 was quite a while ago.
A billion four hundred million dollars of your money has been spent to correct the problem of foam insulation on the main tank peeling off and damaging some or uh uh uh a significant number of the twenty-six thousand tiles that protect the uh space shuttle itself uh when it comes into re-entry from the heat and so forth.
The foam peeling off was supposed to have been solved, a problem that was supposed to have been solved.
By the way, Columbia sustained significant damage back in 1997, a little history here.
After NASA, the foam the foam which protects and coats the external fuel tank, and you need that.
Uh this uh this is uh a holly va highly volatile situation there.
So you need that foam protection on the outside.
The foam had been made uh in part from the coolant Freon.
Prior to 1997, uh the the Freon was the subject of a global warming debate.
The use of the Freon was determined to be environmentally damaging, a substitute was sought.
The substitute apparently was in the outer edges of it, more brittle, prone to peeling off the tank during the stress of takeoff.
And in the case of the 2003 catastrophe hitting the wing edge, the leading edge of the wing of the uh of the shuttle uh Columbia and causing the damage to the tiles, which then did not protect the vehicle during re-entry and the heat.
Uh that uh domino effect led, of course, to the death of the astronauts.
So the question went back to, wait a second.
What what about this?
What about this fuel tank?
What about this foam?
We can't have it peeling off and hitting the uh the shuttle on the uh on the takeoff there.
Well, a billion four hundred million dollars later, uh the NASA was guaranteed, that's the word that was used, guaranteed that the foam would not come off.
That the problem had been fixed.
We all saw the video, the problem's not fixed.
The foam was peeling off.
We were lucky, and and I I don't use that word lightly.
I think we have uh uh Mike uh Giffin, the NASA admin administrator, on this question of uh the foam peeling off and the luck.
In the aftermath of the loss of Columbia, uh, with what we learned about foam and and debris shedding from the tank, we knew at that time that we had been luckier.
Uh Lucky rather than good is the phrase the folks have have used.
You always want to be lucky in whatever you do in life, but when it comes to engineering, you want to be good.
Luck follows those who are prepared.
Luck follows those who follow science and not junk science.
Luck follows those who apply science and not politics.
Luck follows those who are immune from s from politics, particularly environmental wacko politics, and follow the dictates of the dictates of good science.
I'm sorry, but today NASA is not following good science.
In this case, they're following good science in many cases.
It is still a remarkable technological achievement that we're able to leave the bombs of Earth and uh cavort around in space.
No one is denying that.
But I don't think it's equally I don't think it's deniable at all that politics has made an intrusion, an unacceptable intrusion into the scientific process here in a very specific way that very specifically increases the risk of the destruction of the shuttle, uh billions of dollars worth of American taxpayer uh investment there, and more importantly, the lives of those astronauts.
And I just I just think that needs to be laid out.
Because I think if we're going to see some benefit about going to the uh stars, uh proceeding along uh George Bush's challenge to go to Mars, we'd better be doing it with the best available science.
The thirty-five-year-old design of these shuttles has come to an end.
Twenty-six thousand tiles?
Don't you think there's a coating capable of helping us there instead of laboriously putting on twenty-six thousand little tiles all over the outside of that?
Isn't there a role for private enterprise and good science and incentive and reward?
Um those are questions that I want to raise today with you on NASA because I believe after they admitted yesterday, quote, we were wrong to launch, unquote.
Now admitting they were wrong to launch.
Imagine being in the space shuttle.
And you're listening to the news reports.
Hello, I'm launched.
I'm out here.
We were wrong to launch.
How much water do we have again?
Can we check?
Can we check the biscuit supply?
Uh we're going to be up here apparently quite a bit.
No, I I think that this one will probably come back safely.
The cameras, and they were all over the place, uh, look pretty good.
But I'm I'm just I'm just horrified that what we learned from the 2003 disaster of Columbia, horrifying disaster, has not resulted in the necessary change to a foam, if not back to the Freon base to some other type of foam insulation, which would not run afoul of environmental protection agency regulations enacted during the Clinton years.
I'm sorry, junk science.
Haven't we had enough?
Haven't we paid a high enough price yet to be politically correct in uh in the shuttle program.
So, in any event, ladies and gentlemen, that's top of mind for me today is that our astronauts are out there.
The risk that they take anyway has been enhanced by politics, and I don't like it a bit.
1-800-282-2882.
I'm Roger Hedgecock filling in for uh Rush Limbaugh, and I'd like to hear from you uh on that or other topics.
Now look, here's uh uh something that again is not well covered.
The United States Senate, like the United States Congress as a whole, is moving toward a uh a series of successes in accomplishments.
We talked about yesterday the enhancement of um reading and math scores for nine-year-olds, particularly, but nine, thirteen, and seventeen year olds in the latest latest test scores uh for kids in the public schools, the dramatic increases in uh in minority scores,
by the way, particularly black nine-year-olds doing much, much better than they ever did before in uh the 30 some years of uh annual testing that this uh nonprofit, non nonpartisan group that I mentioned yesterday had been tracking.
So no child left behind.
You won't see this again.
I guess you won't see this in the in the uh mainstream media is having a beneficial impact on a system that is demonstrably not working, public education.
Yesterday, the House did vote 217 to 215.
That's a very narrow margin, ladies and gentlemen, to enact the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
Two vote margin.
The Central American Free Trade Agreement, it seems to me, will create uh more jobs in Central America, fewer reasons to illegally immigrate to the United States, more jobs in the United States because more trade always equals more jobs.
It's not a huge panacea because it's a drop in the bucket.
33, 34 billion dollars this year, I guess, out of what do we have, a 12 trillion dollar uh economy.
But it is one in the right direction because we have had no tariffs on the imports from goods coming from these Central American countries.
The the success of CAFTA is to take away the um tariffs on American-made goods going into those countries.
So we had a one-way trade here, a very unfair trade.
Uh we were not tariffing, we were not taxing goods coming from those countries, but those countries were taxing our stuff going into their countries.
So now that's over.
And they're agreeing that American goods will come into their countries, and why not?
Shouldn't we be selling those um Chevies down in uh El Salvador, uh, even at the employee discount?
Maybe they'd get extended down there in Central America.
CAFTA promises, it seems to me, the right kind of trade benefits that we should all be applauding.
The unions are not applauding, and the muscle they put on Congress yesterday was a sight to behold, a dying institution, at least one that has remarkably lesser impact than it used to, the FLCIO, had a remarkable last-minute stand in the House of Representatives.
I want to describe that when we come back.
I'm Roger Hedgecock, filling in for Rush Limbaugh.
Your calls at 1800-282-2882.
Tijuana's own Carlos Santana there.
I'm Roger Hedgecock filling in for uh Rush Limbaugh.
And um again, just one more thing now on CAFTA because it was so close, 217 to 214 in the House, uh, the passage there, 202 Republicans uh yes votes, 15 Democrat yes votes, so very much a party line, but those 15 Democrat yes votes were uh were needed because twenty-seven Republicans voted no.
Why uh why is that?
Well, I got um where did I put it?
I got um a very interesting email uh that I was privy to that had uh that went away.
Oh, here it is.
Uh right in front of me.
That was uh the subject matter of the email, the subject line, you know, on the email.
This is I have to quote this to you, this is very good.
Um quote, find your traitor congressman and let them know they are voted out in 2006.
This was an email from a union organizer in this uh issue, and uh they uh AFL CIO made this the litmus test for union support in the upcoming congressional legisl uh congressional uh uh campaigns.
And uh to be uh sure I looked at our local delegation here in San Diego, and uh we have uh three Republicans, two Democrats in the San Diego Greater San Diego County area, and the two Democrats voted no and the three Republicans voted yes.
How uh meaningful is that union threat, however?
You've been reading about the uh breakup of the AFL CIO, at least uh the Teamsters and the SEIU and others are leaving to form a new coalition, concerned that money too much money, too much union dues money has gone into Democratic Party coffers and not enough into organizing workers uh and new dues paying uh workers into the unions.
So the 10 million dollars a year for each uh Teamsters and SEU both contributed 10 million bucks, round numbers here to uh Democratic um uh party uh causes in the last cycle will not be available to Democratic Party coffers, and I guess the Democrats are going to have to rely on liberal billionaires even more than they did the last time around.
All right, let's get to the phones and get your c take on all of this.
Richard in New Jersey next.
Hi, Richard, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hey, how are you doing?
Good.
Um listen, you know, this whole thing with the shuttle, um, I would give my left you know what to be able to get up there with them regardless of what technology they're still using.
But like I said to your uh guy on the phone, you've got to remember that the B 52s that are uh doing the job overseas are pushing fifty years old, as well are the UTs that are still used by NASA for research.
So, yeah, throw some new technology in the machines, but uh you don't want to spend a whole bunch on them because you've got to replace it with something you don't want to cleave the budgets.
Oh there's no question about any of that, the age is not the issue, it's the issue of what we're doing to keep them up to speed.
The B-52s are constantly rejuvenated with new equipment, uh new avionics, new engines, new landing gear, uh you know, all that stuff.
Uh the the uh shuttles, 26,000 tiles, there's got to be a better way to coat your uh re-entry vehicle.
Don't argue with you.
I used to work with a guy that worked at NASA.
We never spoke about these things, but there's got to be some way of doing that.
I mean, they use it in the industry for other things as well.
Yeah.
But maybe that's the most cost effective thing for them.
Well, it uh it it isn't because the the private sector, uh you know, the guy at Virgin Airways and those people that have been playing around with trying to get space vehicles of different types uh from a private sector point of view, they don't seem to have those same problems.
They seem to be trying to look at uh again what's the most effective and efficient, which you don't get when a government agency is looking at this.
You get uh government agency spending as much as possible and uh building up as many people as possible in the uh bureaucracy.
I mean, they spent a billion four hundred million dollars looking at this foam thing, and it didn't fix it.
Uh that's the kind of thing that in a private sector wouldn't go wouldn't go very far.
Hey, Richard, thanks for the call.
Uh Tony in Long Island, New York, next on the Rush program.
Hi, Tony.
Hi, Roger.
Uh third time core here.
Uh I'm I'm wondering how can something as soft as foam hurt those hard tiles?
And to avoid actually damaging the shuttle, why don't they they just fly it with the shuttle on top of the tanks rather than on the uh rather than hanging below them?
I don't think there's an on top or below, you know.
I'm what I mean they're next to each other.
Well they rotate.
But you notice when the shuttle takes off, it takes off vertically and then it rolls that the uh so the shuttle's hanging upside down from the Yeah, and you know what?
I'm no I'm no expert.
First of all, the foam is hard.
Uh the foam is very hard.
Uh particularly in this particular free non-free on foam.
Apparently, descriptions I've read, I'm no scientist, I don't know uh the details of this, but from descriptions I've read, the outer layers of this foam harden up uh as uh they're hard as a rock, and they come off.
Remember, this shuttle is going uh what?
Uh at that the point in time when these things were peeling off, it was going thousands of miles an hour.
Uh so anything that's flying through the air at that speed hits those tiles is going to uh impact them.
They had eleven times in 1997, before all this started to happen.
They had a warning uh when the uh when the challenger came back in nineteen ninety-seven, came back successfully, but they noticed they had eleven times the normal number of tiles damaged and wondered, oh, how is this happening?
Well, they traced it back then.
They knew this then.
They knew this eight years ago that the foam was peeling off where the Freon-based foam never used to do that in the previous hundred or whatever it was uh flights of these different shuttle vehicles.
So I think that's what uh what I'm focusing on uh today.
Uh Jim and Logan, Utah on the Rush program.
Hi, Jim.
Hi, Roger.
I um uh I'm a long time listener, Rush Limbaugh and uh enjoy your uh hosting his show and his absence and uh uh was listening this morning, sort of money my own business, and uh heard you talking about Mike Griffin and NASA and uh got a little fired up about that, so I thought I'd call in and uh add my two cents.
I'm uh 15 year veteran of the space program, been in and out, military and civil sectors, and Mike is actually a uh pretty good friend of mine.
And uh I would say that most of us who knew him were extremely pleased when he came into the new job, and uh to hear him described as politically correct or even be associated with anything politically correct is uh mind boggling to me.
He's uh pretty content.
They took the Freon out of the foam, the foam is damaging the shuttle.
The foam took down the challenger, they're still using the same foam, it still peels off.
What else do you call it?
Uh you know, this is uh a long time problem that these guys have known about for years.
I understand.
And uh as you correctly point out, the foam was changed due to uh non non uh uh environmentally harming materials uh many years ago.
In fact, the first two shuttle flights, as I recall flew without foam.
You remember the white tank.
So they don't even need this darn stuff.
Um and so my guess is what's going on here is they simply don't understand the problem.
And I agree that it's a bad thing.
It's a really bad thing, and I'm a huge critic of NASA.
All right, Jim, I've got to run, but I appreciate what you're saying.
Uh we will come back with more.
I'm Roger Hedgepack, filling in for Rush Limbaugh and back with your call at 1-800-282-2882 after this.
Welcome back to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Roger Hedgecock filling in for Russia 1-800-282-2882 and uh rush back on Monday, of course.
And again, in the uh United States Senate yesterday, uh after several years of uh stalled bills in uh the areas of energy and transportation, those bills are moving.
286.5 billion dollars for roads, bridges, mass transportation, and safety over six years, uh guaranteeing that each state will get at least ninety-two cents on each fuel tax dollar, at least.
Obviously, some states getting more than that as needed.
But uh what I liked about all of this is that 80% of the money will go to roads.
It's better in California, where we spend about sixteen percent of the money on roads and about ninety percent or eighty-four percent of the money on uh bike paths or whatever it is that they spend it on, because they sure don't spend it on roads out here.
Good grief.
We used to have the best highways in the country.
Don't even start driving in California.
Uh unless you've done a fair share of driving in Mexico.
Then you probably are gonna be okay.
Um The uh energy bill likewise is going to uh have some uh great incentives to restart the uh nuclear power program.
It has conservation in it, it has the alternatives in it, and believe me, I'm into alternatives.
I'm building a house right now with solar energy on it.
I'm gonna love it.
It's got one of those uh the meter instead of you know, I've got I've got the meter from the utility company.
Instead of going forward all the time, uh showing how much money I'm I'm sp spending and how much uh energy I'm using there uh to pay them whatever the rate is that they want, you know, with their lap dogs at the uh public utilities commission.
So, you know, that's uh that's been the the the thing up to now.
No, no, no.
Now I got a new meter.
Which I'm gonna this is not yet running, but it's being built, that also goes backwards during the day when my solar panels are generating my electricity and the excess gets in effect sold back to the utility.
So to the extent that something is going back through the wire the other way, the meter is going backwards during the day and then forwards to whatever extent I use the stuff at night when the sun goes away.
Uh and hopefully that works out the way we've planned this engineering-wise, and I hope I don't have the same engineer that on the the foam on NASA.
Uh if we've got the the right engineer, uh this thing is gonna net out to zero.
So that's my contribution, and you know, the hell with the PUC and the and and the utility and all these guys that have been raping us for years.
So believe me, I'm into all that.
But I think this energy bill has a lot of other stuff in it too in terms of tax breaks for energy efficient appliances and hybrid cars and good things that we ought to be doing.
Uh and I think that's great.
I know the purists among you are gonna be horrified by the whole thing, but as far as I'm concerned, um I'm tired of uh all these all these goodies going to corporate and other uh interests.
Uh the incentives ought to trickle down to the taxpayers who are paying for them in the first place to do the right thing, and I think that's one of them.
Also, the uh the Congress, the Senate is going to uh see my uh point, and I think I made this yesterday, that it is craziness to allow gun manufacturers to be sued because someone who bought a gun might have used it uh in the wrong way.
Might have used it in a criminal way, might have used it to kill somebody.
What does that have to do with the manufacture of the gun?
We don't sue auto manufacturers because some guy takes uh a car on a high speed chase, or in O.J.'s case on a low speed chase, and uh and hurts somebody.
It's not the Ford Bronco manufacturer's fault.
Um it's the you see, this is the old liberal thing.
It's never the individual's fault.
It's always the forces and environment.
And they were abused as children and they had conservatives as teachers.
And they had, you know, all that.
And uh and and so uh you you you've got to excuse what they do.
You've got to understand them.
They blew up uh the Trade Center.
Well, you've just got to understand how angry they are with you.
It's your fault.
So all of that mentality now builds up to the point we have to sue gun manufacturers because some very few, as it turns out, people misuse guns in the commission of crime and mayhem in our neighborhoods.
Far as I'm concerned, shoot the people who use the guns in that manner, and we won't have the problem, but that's just me.
So the idea that we should we should sue the gun industry for producing the gun is finally getting the slap down in um the United States Senate, the bill to grant immunity uh to the uh gun manufacturers from these crazy lawsuits that have been filed as well as futures, has sixty-seven co-sponsors, including thirteen Democrats, seven votes more than the sixty-seven is seven votes more than the filibuster cutoff, of course.
And the Senate is expected to uh vote Friday to take up the bill for debate and vote on the bill before the Senate leaves on recess.
Uh let me pinpoint uh the evil doer in this uh entire uh gun immunity case, Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a state the size of the county that I live in, has two senators.
One of them is a guy named Jack Reed, who according to this picture in the uh New York Times can't even stand up straight.
But he also can't uh apparently think straight.
Uh the logic of his position that gun manufacturers are responsible for crime dictates that he be ejected immediately from the United States Congress and uh sent to the appropriate medical attention under his gold-plated medical care plan that members of Congress have.
1800-282-2882.
Here's Rob in Florida.
Rob, welcome to the program.
Hey, Roger, how you doing, man?
Okay, what's up?
Uh uh doing doing good.
Um I just want to say that uh that you do uh you're the number one uh replacement for Rush.
Um what's the toss up between you and Walter E. I like Walter too.
Uh I just had a comment about this uh CAFTA thing.
I think it's uh I think it's pie in the sky.
I think it's uh it's very dangerous.
Um I don't think it's going to be a benefit to the United States in any way.
And in fact, I think it'll just drain more workers, because if I'm if I'm a big conglomerate and I'm making something here in the United States and I can pick up and move my factory from you know wherever it might be and move it to, you know, Central America or somewhere and pay a worker a buck uh an hour and no benefits uh and run the products back in the United States and sell them with you know duty free.
Why would I not do that?
And I I just think it's we're just being hoodwinked by the by the people that we put in Congress that uh, you know, that that uh you know promise not to let this stuff sort this sort of stuff happen.
I mean, it's just it's it's a cry and shame.
Rob, it could happen, uh, but I'll tell you I don't think so, and I'll tell you why I don't think so.
The uh the the countries involved here in Central America already have U.S. companies doing business there, uh Intel, Proctor and Gamble, Hewlett Packard, UPS, Pfizer, they're all in these areas anyway.
They will continue to be in these areas.
The only thing CAFTA remarkably changes is it eliminates over a period of time the tariffs charged by those countries uh against U.S. manufactured goods.
So the plus here is that the tariffs are reduced in those countries and stuff that we make here is then exported to there at a cheaper price, and therefore there'll be more of it.
In other words, I guess what I'm saying is I think this one, and maybe it wasn't true of other trade agreements, but this one specifically lowers the barriers to trade from the standpoint of selling our American-made goods.
And that's I think a good thing and something that's gonna help us.
Uh some of the stuff I've been reading about how uh it's going to grant some some authority to some foreign tribunals and that sort of thing, uh, where they're telling, you know, certain states uh to drop some of their laws and even the United States itself to drop some of their laws and that sort of thing, and i isn't that kind of giving up some of our sovereignty.
Uh yes, and uh and it's a good thing, and let me tell you why.
No way, Roger.
Well, listen well, but listen, listen, listen.
Most of those and we're in those right now, the World Trade Organization and all of that.
Uh we're in all that right now.
I mean, that's nothing new.
But but what I like about, and there's not you know, it's not perfect, I mean, don't get me wrong, but but what I like about the the WTO and other like organizations that govern these free trade pacts is that generally speaking, they strike down government subsidies.
For instance, the uh w w WTO is after the American government for too many farm subsidies.
And I think that's right.
I think we ought to reduce farm subsidies.
We ought to get rid of these sugar subsidies.
That's that's correct.
Uh so when when when the these free trade agreements get done, for instance, governments like China can no longer protect their state owned industries.
They've got to open them up to competition, and that's good.
Yeah.
I suppose.
All right, Rob, hey, thanks for the call.
Let's well, you know, and we'll see what happens.
But this thing is uh thirty-three, thirty-four billion.
It's not uh a drop in the bucket, but it's uh you know, it's not uh a huge thing either.
For the countries involved, it's huge.
For the countries involved, the idea of being able to get cheaper American goods and thereby even more friendly uh uh uh uh markets for their own goods means that more of their people will stay there.
For instance, let me just tell you specific, and uh and this is uh this is quick.
Uh in the uh in the United States we're so used to having um we're so used to having mortgage money available at the cheapest possible price in thirty years and and and interest only and all these things that have uh caused the housing boom to occur.
Uh we don't realize that in most countries of the world they don't have uh cheap uh mortgage money.
This uh uh CAFTA will apparently allow somebody in um in the Central American uh companies, uh countries rather, to buy a nice home.
For instance, in Sal Salvador, you can buy a very nice home, uh says Investors Business Daily for about thirteen thousand dollars.
But the best you can do on mortgage money is about fifteen years, very high interest rates, etc.
because there isn't a good flow of capital coming in and out of that country from around the world.
They have protections.
Uh the so-called protections mean that the consumer is uh screwed.
So the consumer in Salvador, El Salvador now, will be able to get mortgages twenty-five years or more.
What does that do?
Home ownership.
What does that do?
Create a better middle class.
What does that do?
It means there's opportunity for people in construction and other related fur uh th to stay in their own country and not illegally come to the United States seeking opportunity because there's no opportunity in their country.
I think this was what this all means.
And uh it's certainly the dream that George Bush has.
It by the way, builds on the Caribbean initiative that Ronald Reagan put in in the first place, which lowered the tariffs uh in the United States on goods imported from those countries, and then didn't demand that those countries lower their tariffs on goods that we make here and send to there.
So this is what this accomplished CAFTA accomplishes today, which is an important completing the circle that Ronald Reagan began.
I'm Roger Hedgecock, Infor Rush Limbaugh.
Short break back with your call after this.
Welcome back to the Rush Limbaugh program here at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Roger Hedgecock filling in for the vacationing Rush Limbaugh and taking your calls at 1 800 282-2882 on a day when I think all of us have the uh shuttle astronauts in our thoughts and prayers.
I hope you do, uh and some concerns about uh just just what price political correctness will exact again from this program.
I don't know, it's weighing on me, that's all I can tell you.
Don in Clearwater Florida, next Don, welcome to the Rush Show.
Hey, great.
Thanks, Roger.
And I just wanted to comment to the uh call you had about the uh anti-CAFT uh.
I we've uh in the company that I work for, we've gone offshore with some of our products, and it's come out there, it just hasn't hasn't worked.
The uh quality of the work doesn't work.
Um the uh culture is different, and our call centers have had to come back onshore because of the language barriers and they just don't quite understand American products.
Where'd you put your call center?
Where'd you put the call center?
Uh we were Central America.
Uh the only success we've actually had is with uh Costa Rica, where they're actually a lot more Western than Central American.
But again, the uh I I think that the experiment of going offshore is has been a big failure, at least for uh our company, and I think that you see it's been seen in like with AMF in the 70s.
So what what are you gonna do?
We're re we're reinventing things we already had in place that uh the the uh bean counters said that if we if you move offshore we can save more money and move everything and now it's costing us more to ramp back up, try to rehire people.
And it's uh the re retooling is is has really cost us quite a bit.
So in other words, you're moving those call centers back to the United States?
Yes, sir, we are.
Interesting.
Interesting.
Don, thanks for the call.
Thank you very much.
And not not not every part of CAFTA is obviously uh uh perfect.
Twenty-four thousand pages, I understand.
Nothing can be perfect as 24,000 pages, because you know, buried in 22,842 page uh is going to be something that is the design for some special interest.
And this is one of them I don't like.
Section six of this treaty puts all the vitamin and mineral supplements under the control of the uh World Health Organization, um United Nations type uh uh organization, and again, it's like the uh FDI FDA folks, they want to get their hands on controlling all vitamins and minerals and supplements and all of that, which is a huge fight here in the United States.
Uh the um apparently the bureaucrats want to make sure it's like the European Union that they get a chance to uh put this kind of control into the free trade agreements, and then once it's in there, say, well, see now we've got it in free trade.
How come we can't have it here at domestically?
Leave your hands off my vitamin C, will you?
I don't need the FDA to tell me that I need it.
You know, thank you.
Okay.
Rick in Maryland next.
Rick, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi, Roger, how are you?
Hi, good.
Hey, my my point is uh the uh EPA probably caused a problem with the shuttle, but this isn't the first time.
No.
Uh a good example is the World Trade Center when it came down.
That was originally supposed to be built with the substance coatings on the steel beams.
They use the uh lower substitute that doesn't provide as much heat resistance and flame resistance, and it could be one of the possibilities why the building collapsed.
Yeah, it's such a good point.
I mean, we we have and and and there's a there's a good point about asbestos in certain forms being a health hazard, but is it as much a health hazard as uh the flames that are no longer retarded because the asbestos is not there?
If you burn to death but your lungs are clear, I just don't understand the benefit.
I've I've took trouble balancing that out.
Uh so you know I think it's a I think it's a really good point, Rick.
And the one point is best has been replaced in the workforce in the workplace with silicon fiber.
Silicon fiber causes silicosis just as bad, but since it's regulated on how to use it, uh it's okay to use.
So why ban a material that can do a good job as long as you treat it properly?
Sure, take it out of freight pads where you're getting the fibers into the air and people can breathe it.
But if you can use the material properly, why not use it?
The same thing with the shuttle.
There's ways to control free on.
So there's there's ETA kills more people than anybody else.
Rick, important point.
Uh we've had a similar problem.
I I guess I don't want to go through the uh the whole uh encyclopedia of uh of junk science and how it's uh made our uh environment worse and safety uh a problem.
But in in California, we were told uh you can't have this smog.
You can't have this these cars uh belching these pollutants that are fouling the air and fouling your kids' lungs and you know, all that.
And they were it's right.
That's exactly right.
So what did we do?
We put in MTBE, which is uh short for some long chemical that the government uh forced the gasoline makers to put in to lower air pollution, and in fact it did.
It did lower air pollution.
Good.
Unfortunately, it's a cancer-causing element that seeped into our drinking water.
And now the cancer incident uh risk is much higher than the lung risk was from the smog we got rid of.
We've got to start asking the right questions before this stuff happens, ladies and gentlemen.
I'm Roger Hedgecock in for Rush Limbaugh.
Back after this.
Welcome back to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Uh again, a lot of reaction from the audience about my comments about police officers following the uh shooting in uh Britain, and I've got uh many police officers responding.
This one uh Lou says, Roger, I heard your comments on police marksmanship, or rather lack of same.
I'm an NRA certified pistol instructor and competitive shooter.
I've taught many pistol courses at various police departments.
I'm always appalled at how bad police officers are at using a tool that can be used to save their lives.
They're supposed to practice every week, but obviously few do so.
I once told the police chief the safest place for a felon to be is in the officer's line of fire.
Sad.
Lou G. So uh a lot of it, and I have more from police officers as well.
We'll talk a little bit about that.
What about the estate tax?
This is the only place where the Senate is falling down.
We'll have some more on the terror war.
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