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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 today, a lot to do.
Let me start this way, and we have more reaction on the state of the police readiness to talk about 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.
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, and we should.
Let's get to the top story today, though, and that's, of course, the shuttle.
The shuttle situation is, well, tense this morning.
The remaining shuttles have been grounded.
The shuttle, which is up there, is 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 $400 million of your money has been spent to correct the problem of foam insulation on the main tank peeling off and damaging some or a significant number of the 26,000 tiles that protect the space shuttle itself 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.
Little history here.
After NASA, the foam, which protects and coats the external fuel tank, and you need that.
This is a highly volatile situation there.
So you need that foam protection on the outside.
The foam had been made in part from the coolant Freon.
Prior to 1997, 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 shuttle Columbia and causing the damage to the tiles, which then did not protect the vehicle during re-entry and the heat.
That domino effect led, of course, to the death of the astronauts.
So the question went back to, wait a second, what about this fuel tank?
What about this foam?
We can't have it peeling off and hitting the shuttle on the takeoff there.
Well, $1,400,000,000 later, 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 I don't use that word lightly.
I think we have Mike Giffin, the NASA administrator, on this question of the foam peeling off and the luck.
In the aftermath of the loss of Columbia, with what we learned about foam and debris shedding from the tank, we knew at that time that we had been luckier.
Lucky rather than good is the phrase that folks 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 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 bounds of Earth and 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, billions of dollars worth of American taxpayer investment there, and more importantly, the lives of those astronauts.
And I just think that needs to be laid out because I think if we're going to see some benefit about going to the stars, proceeding along George Bush's challenge to go to Mars, we'd better be doing it with the best available science.
The 35-year-old design of these shuttles has come to an end.
26,000 tiles?
Don't you think there's a coating capable of helping us there instead of laboriously putting on 26,000 little tiles all over the outside of that?
Isn't there a role for private enterprise and good science and incentive and reward?
So 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 the biscuit supply?
We're going to be up here apparently quite a bit.
No, I think that this one will probably come back safely.
The cameras, and they were all over the place, look pretty good.
But 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 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 Rush Limbaugh, and I'd like to hear from you on that or other topics.
Now, look, here's something that, again, is not well covered.
The United States Senate, the United States Congress as a whole, is moving toward a series of successes and accomplishments.
We talked about yesterday the enhancement of reading and math scores for nine-year-olds particularly, but nine, 13, and 17-year-olds, and the latest test scores for kids in the public schools, the dramatic increases in minority scores, by the way, particularly black nine-year-olds doing much, much better than they ever did before in the 30-some years of annual testing that this non-profit,
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 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 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 this year, I guess, out of what do we have, a $12 trillion 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 success of CAFTA is to take away the tariffs on American-made goods going into those countries.
So we had a one-way trade here, a very unfair trade.
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 Chevies down in El Salvador, even at the employee discount?
Maybe they'd extend it 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 1-800-282-2882.
Tijuana Zon Carlos Santana there.
I'm Roger Hedgecock filling in for Rush Limbaugh.
And again, just one more thing on CAFTA, because it was so close, 217 to 214 in the House, the passage there, 202 Republicans yes votes, 15 Democrat yes votes.
So very much a party line, but those 15 Democrat yes votes were needed because 27 Republicans voted no.
Why is that?
Well, I got it.
I got a very interesting email that I was privy to that had went away.
Oh, here it is.
Right in front of me.
That was the subject matter of the email, the subject line, you know, on the email.
I have to quote this to you.
This is very good.
Quote, Find your traitor congressmen and let them know they are voted out in 2006.
This was an email from a union organizer in this issue, and they, AFL-CIO, made this the litmus test for union support in the upcoming congressional campaigns.
And to be sure, I looked at our local delegation here in San Diego, and we have 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 meaningful is that union threat, however?
You've been reading about the breakup of the AFL-CIO.
At least 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 and new dues-paying workers into the unions.
So the $10 million a year for each Teamsters and SEU both contributed $10 million round numbers here to Democratic Party 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 take on all of this.
Richard in New Jersey next.
Hi, Richard.
Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Program.
Hey, how you feeling?
Good.
Listen, you know, this whole thing with the shuttle, 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 guy on the phone, you've got to remember that the B-52s that are doing the job overseas are pushing 50 years old, as well are the U-2s that are still used by NASA for research.
So, yeah, throw some new technology in the machines, but 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 bleed 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, new avionics, new engines, new landing gear, you know, all that stuff.
The shuttles, 26,000 tiles, there's got to be a better way to coat your 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.
But maybe that's the most cost-effective thing for them.
Well, it isn't because the private sector, you know, the guy at Virgin Airways and those people that have been playing around with trying to get space vehicles of different types from a private sector point of view, they don't seem to have those same problems.
They seem to be trying to look at, again, what's the most effective and efficient, which you don't get when a government agency is looking at this.
You get a government agency spending as much as possible and building up as many people as possible in the bureaucracy.
I mean, they spent $1,400,000,000 looking at this foam thing, and it didn't fix it.
That's the kind of thing that in a private sector wouldn't go very far.
Hey, Richard, thanks for the call.
Tony in Long Island, New York, next on the Rush program.
Hi, Tony.
Hi, Roger.
Third time CORE here.
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 just fly it with the shuttle on top of the tanks rather than hanging below them?
I don't think there's an on top or below.
You know, what I mean, they're next to each other.
Well, no, no, but you notice when the shuttle takes off, it takes off vertically, and then it rolls so the shuttles hang upside down from the...
Yeah, and you know what?
I'm no...
I'm no expert.
First of all, the foam is hard.
The foam is very hard, particularly in this particular non-Freon foam.
Apparently, descriptions I've read, I'm no scientist, I don't know the details of this, but from descriptions I've read, the outer layers of this foam harden up.
They're hard as a rock, and they come off.
Remember, this shuttle is going, what?
At the point in time when these things were peeling off, it was going thousands of miles an hour.
So anything that's flying through the air at that speed hits those tiles is going to impact them.
They had 11 times, in 1997, before all this started to happen, they had a warning when the Challenger came back in 1997, came back successfully, but they noticed they had 11 times the normal number of tiles damaged and wondered, 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 100 or whatever it was flights of these different shuttle vehicles.
So I think that's what I'm focusing on today.
Jim in Logan, Utah on the Rush program.
Hi, Jim.
Hi, Roger.
I am a longtime listener, Rush Limbaugh, and enjoy your hosting his show in his absence.
And I was listening this morning, sort of minding my own business, and heard you talking about Mike Griffin and NASA.
And I got a little fired up about that, so I thought I'd call in and add my two cents.
I'm a 15-year veteran of the space program, been in and out, military and civil sectors.
And Mike is actually a pretty good friend of mine.
And I would say that most of us who knew him were extremely pleased when he came into the new job.
And to hear him described as politically correct or even be associated with anything politically correct is mind-boggling to me.
He's pretty complicated.
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?
You know, this is a long-time problem that these guys have known about for years.
I understand.
And as you correctly point out, the foam was changed due to non-environmentally harming materials 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.
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.
We will come back with more.
I'm Roger Hedgecock, 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 Rush Back on Monday, of course.
And again, in the United States Senate yesterday, after several years of stalled bills in the areas of energy and transportation, those bills are moving $286.5 billion for roads, bridges, mass transportation, and safety over six years, guaranteeing that each state will get at least 92 cents on each fuel tax dollar, at least.
Obviously, some states getting more than that as needed.
But 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 16% of the money on roads and about 90% or 84% of the money on 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 unless you've done a fair share of driving in Mexico.
Then you probably are going to be okay.
The energy bill likewise is going to have some great incentives to restart the 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 going to love it.
It's got one of those, the meter, instead of, you know, I've got the meter from the utility company, instead of going forward all the time, showing how much money I'm spending and how much energy I'm using there to pay them whatever the rate is that they want, you know, with their lapdogs at the Public Utilities Commission.
So, you know, that's been the thing up to now.
No, no, no.
Now I got a new meter, which I'm going to, 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.
And hopefully that works out the way we've planned this engineering-wise.
And I hope I don't have the same engineer that the foam on NASA.
If we've got the right engineer, this thing is going to net out to zero.
So that's my contribution.
And, you know, the hell with the PUC 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.
And I think that's great.
I know the purists among you are going to be horrified by the whole thing.
But as far as I'm concerned, I'm tired of all these goodies going to corporate and other interests.
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 Congress, the Senate is going to see my 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 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 manufacturer of the gun?
We don't sue auto manufacturers because some guy takes a car on a high-speed chase, or in O.J.'s case on a low-speed chase, and hurts somebody.
It's not the Ford Bronco manufacturers' fault.
It's the ⁇ 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 so you've got to excuse what they do.
You've got to understand them.
They blew up 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.
As 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 sue the gun industry for producing the gun is finally getting the slapdown in the United States Senate.
The bill to grant immunity to the gun manufacturers from these crazy lawsuits that have been filed, as well as futures, has 67 co-sponsors, including 13 Democrats, seven votes more than, the 67 is seven votes more than the filibuster cutoff, of course.
And the Senate is expected to vote Friday to take up the bill for debate and vote on the bill before the Senate leaves on recess.
Let me pinpoint the evildoer in this entire 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 New York Times can't even stand up straight.
But he also can't apparently think straight.
The logic of his position that gun manufacturers are responsible for crime dictates that he be ejected immediately from the United States Congress and sent to the appropriate medical attention under his gold-plated medical care plan that members of Congress have.
1-800-282-2882, here's Rob in Florida.
Rob, welcome to the program.
Hey, Roger.
How you doing, man?
Okay, what's up?
Doing good.
I just want to say that you're the number one replacement for Rush.
What's the toss-up between you and Walter E?
I like Walter, too.
I just had a comment about this CAFTA thing.
I think it's pie in the sky.
I think it's very dangerous.
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 a big conglomerate and I'm making something here in the United States and I can pick up and move my factory from wherever it might be and move it to Central America or somewhere and pay a worker a buck an hour and no benefits and run the products back in the United States and sell them with duty free, why would I not do that?
And I just think we're just being hoodwinked by the people that we put in Congress that promise not to let this sort of stuff happen.
I mean, it's just a crying shame.
Rob, it could happen, but I'll tell you, I don't think so, and I'll tell you why I don't think so.
The countries involved here in Central America already have U.S. companies doing business there.
Intel, Procter ⁇ 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 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 going to help us.
Do you not think, though, and there's some pages in there, some of the stuff I've been reading about how it's going to grant some authority to some foreign tribunals and that sort of thing, where they're telling certain states to drop some of their laws and even the United States itself to drop some of their laws and that sort of thing.
And isn't that kind of giving up some of our sovereignty?
Yes, and it's a good thing.
And let me tell you why.
No way, Roger.
Well, but listen, listen, listen.
Most of those, and we're in those right now, the World Trade Organization and all of that.
We're in all that right now.
I mean, that's nothing new.
But what I like about, and it's not perfect, I mean, don't get me wrong, but what I like about the WTO and other like organizations that govern these free trade pacts is that generally speaking, they strike down government subsidies.
For instance, the 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 correct.
So when 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.
Well, you know, we'll see what happens.
But this thing is $33, $34 billion.
It's not a drop in the bucket, but it's not 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 markets for their own goods means that more of their people will stay there.
For instance, let me just tell you a specific, and this is quick.
In the United States, we're so used to having mortgage money available at the cheapest possible price in 30 years and interest only and all these things that have caused the housing boom to occur.
We don't realize that in most countries of the world, they don't have cheap mortgage money.
This CAFTA will apparently allow somebody in the Central American countries rather, to buy a nice home.
For instance, in El Salvador, you can buy a very nice home, says Investors Business Daily, for about $13,000.
But the best you can do on mortgage money is about 15 years, very high interest rates, et cetera, because there isn't a good flow of capital coming in and out of that country from around the world.
They have protections.
The so-called protections mean that the consumer is screwed.
So the consumer in Salvador, El Salvador now, will be able to get mortgages 25 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 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 is what this all means.
And 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 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 CAFTA accomplishes today, which is an important completing the circle that Ronald Reagan began.
I'm Roger Hedgecock in for 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 shuttle astronauts in our thoughts and prayers.
I hope you do.
And some concerns about 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.
I just wanted to comment to the call you had about the anti-CAFTA.
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 worked.
The quality of the work doesn't work.
The 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 did you put the call center?
We went to Central America.
The only success we've actually had is with Costa Rica, where they're actually a lot more Western than Central American.
But again, I think that the experiment of going offshore has been a big failure, at least for our company.
And I think that it's been seen with AMF in the 70s.
So what are you going to do?
We're reinventing things we already had in place that the bean counter said that if we could 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 the retooling has really cost us quite a bit.
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 every part of CAFTA is obviously perfect.
24,000 pages, I understand.
Nothing can be perfect.
That's 24,000 pages, because you know, buried in 22,842 page is going to be something that is designed for some special interest.
And this is one of them I don't like.
Section 6 of this treaty puts all the vitamin and mineral supplements under the control of the World Health Organization, United Nations-type organization.
And again, it's like the 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.
Apparently, the bureaucrats want to make sure, like the European Union, that they get a chance to 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 domestically?
Just leave your hands off my vitamin C, William.
I don't need the FDA to tell me that I need it.
You know, thank you.
Okay.
Rick and Maryland next.
Rick, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Program.
Hi, Roger.
How are you?
Hi, good.
My point is the EPA probably caused a problem with the shuttle, but this isn't the first time.
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 a 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.
You know, it's such a good point.
I mean, we have, and there's a good point about asbestos in certain forms being a health hazard, but is it as much a health hazard as 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 trouble balancing that out.
So I think it's a really good point, Rick.
And the one point is asbestos 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, 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 brake 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 Freon.
So the EPA kills more people than anybody else.
Rick, important point.
We've had a similar problem.
I guess I don't want to go through the whole encyclopedia of junk science and how it's made our environment worse and safety a problem.
But in California, we were told you can't have this smog.
You can't have these cars belching these pollutants that are fouling the air and fouling your kids' lungs and all that.
And it's right.
That's exactly right.
So what did we do?
We put in MTBE, which is short for some long chemical that the government 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 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.
Again, a lot of reaction from the audience about my comments about police officers following the shooting in Britain, and I've got many police officers responding.
This one, 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 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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