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Sept. 28, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:31
September 28, 2005, Wednesday, Hour #2
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And uh greetings, conversationalists, uh Tom Sullivan's sitting in for uh Rush Linbaugh.
He's off just for the day.
Don't worry, he'll be back to guide the program uh tomorrow.
But uh for today, I am in here to I don't know what I'm doing.
I have I'm in here to keep to keep the golden EIB microphone warm.
That's it.
We've got the phone number is uh 800 28282.
I sounded like uh what's his name from that uh vice presidential candidate back with uh Perot.
What am I doing here?
What am I yeah, the late Admiral Stockdale, yeah, he just passed away.
Yeah.
What am I doing here?
I don't know.
Somebody tell me.
All right, so we've got uh I just watched a little bit about this Tom Delay business here, and it's all about uh Texas politics and Texas campaign laws and corporate donations to Texans for a Republican majority and some of the money they say in the Texas grand jury went to uh s support candidates, and you can't do that in Texas, so anyway, Tom DeLay says he will temporarily step aside uh in his leadership post in the House.
So uh yeah, I know yeah, they are, and they've got they've got frist next in their in their site.
So I mean it's uh it's it's all it's all I mean oh yes.
Speaking of frist, you know uh.
Senator Frist is uh there saying, Well, what did you do when you sold your stock of you know you sold it at this high price and uh you made a lot of money on it, so there must have been a Martha Stewart moment going on and and uh oh yeah, wink wink, you had some sort of of uh blind trust,
but you told them to sell, which you can do under the rules, and you even went through the Senate ethics committee beforehand, you got permission, you did all the sort of preliminary work months in advance, but somehow you somehow got one of the highest prices of the year, even though the price is down just a little bit from where he sold.
Um they're making him they're they're they're they're stirring up all this, but at the meantime.
I don't mean to share with you this dirty little secret, but John Corzine, who uh isn't he running uh Senator Corzine, isn't he running for governor of New Jersey now?
He has uh uh well uh I don't know how this works because he has a a blind trust and has Goldman Sachs.
He used to run Goldman Sachs and a bunch of Goldman Sachs stock in there, and all of a sudden Corzin is Corsine is going around uh well, I'm gonna fix I'm gonna clean all this uh blind trust thing up with my Goldman Sachs stock.
Nobody's going after him.
It's all very interesting.
This is a tactic, it's an obvious tactic in the political handbook of the Democratic Party is to go after the leadership of the opposition by using hook or crook, whatever you can possibly do.
Anyway, so we'll we'll follow this along as it as it unfolds.
But that word coming down from Texas just a few minutes ago about uh Tom DeLay stepping aside temporarily as uh in his post in the uh in the house.
Um refineries we don't have oh, we don't have refineries.
Uh great piece again, Wall Street Journal refinery in capacity today uh is uh printed today.
But yesterday uh for my for my local show, I was uh digging around, rooting around yesterday day before.
This William Jefferson, the the congressman from New Orleans.
I was rooting around because he was he's in there and he was he was uh one of the Democrats that was believe it or not, this guy who's got the FBI rating his house and his car and his business and his home and there's something there's uh there's some uh there's stinkometer goes off pretty high when it comes to William Jefferson anyway.
But but he is yeah, he's taking all this stuff out of the Rush went over all this stuff with you.
So you know the story about William Jefferson, that he had the audacity to stand there yesterday and lecture Michael Brown, but in my uh in my going through the background of William Jefferson, I saw where he was always seemed like hand in hand with Dennis Kucinich.
Good old Dennis Kacinich, who has uh never seen uh a liberal flag that isn't liberal enough for him.
I mean, this guy is really way out there.
So I start all of a sudden I started I saw all these headlines, and I wound up on Kisinich's website.
And on his website, he proudly lists all these uh press releases that his office puts out, and boy, they work hard for Dennis Kacinich, because he puts out a lot of press releases.
And I started reading just the just the head note of the press releases from Kucinich.
And it ties in with this story today about the fact that we have uh a lack of refineries in this country.
Uh I'm being charitable.
It's It's more than a lack.
I mean, it's unbelievable.
I'll get into the numbers here in just a minute about how nothing has been done in this country for twenty-nine years.
Let's see, uh Bush was how old they because Bush had to be involved with this.
But in any case, there's no refinery built for 29 years in this country.
Despite the fact that Bush and all his oil buddies would like to, we haven't had any new refineries built.
Well, maybe there's a little reason.
And this is why it's so disingenuous for Congress to investigate all of this, because here's Dennis Kucinich, who is one of many congressmen who share the same feelings.
Let me just read to you the headlines from just four of his of his press releases.
Kucinich, no to new oil refineries.
Dennis Kucinich speaking from the floor of the house.
Kucinich, no to oil drilling in Alaska.
Speaking from the floor of the house.
The reason that he did not want drilling in Alaska was because the working families do not want it in America.
I did not know that.
I kind of do want it, but I guess uh Dennis Kucinich says American working families do not want it, which I guess means therefore if you want it, you must not be a working family.
Uh Dennis Kucinich, no to oil drilling in the Great Lakes.
Dennis Kucinich speaking from the floor of the house.
The reason there is a different reason.
It's not the families that don't want that.
It's because of the fact that the uh they want the uh clean water coming out of the Great Lakes.
Now I'm no water expert on uh the Great Lakes, and I know uh that you find folks in Cleveland.
You've got uh you've got the Great Lakes right there.
I I I've heard stories about it.
I is are they clean have they cleaned it up?
Is it cleaning up?
I'm not sure.
One time one time, couldn't you walk across Lake Erie at one time wasn't wasn't that possible?
Um in any case, that was the concern is the water is drinking water.
I did not know that Cleveland got their drinking water directly from the lake.
I thought it went through some sort of process before it got into the taps in your homes there in Ohio.
But um so that's the that's the excuse for uh for no drilling in the Great Lakes.
The working families are okay with it, but the clean water people are not.
And then um Kucinich submitting the gas price spike act of 2005.
Oil companies continue to rake the American consumer over the coals.
The fastest way to bring relief is to bring in a windfall profits tax.
That will give you relief faster than anything else.
So we've got uh four four of them here.
You wonder why we don't have refineries.
No to drilling, no to drilling, no to drilling, and tax the oil companies for um for their drilling.
So I and the question you have to ask Dennis Kucinich, where do you want a refinery bill?
Where would one be?
Where would one work for you?
He even says, where's his where's his uh nobody wants a refinery in their backyard?
Well, what well then where are we do we link any of this, Dennis, with the price of where we what we've got from the from the hit from the hurricanes?
That we have a choke point, that we have uh uh what, more than thirty percent at the at the peak of the two storms of our capacity to refine oil were shut down because they're all located in the same area.
Oh, and then you can't um you can't build any more refineries down in the Houston area because of the fact that the people that will go work there will suffer from the air that comes from the refineries, even though the refineries have spent tens of billions of dollars on clean air modifications to their uh to their facilities.
So you can't win.
He doesn't want any more refineries anywhere.
And yet he doesn't want us to import it from you know where.
And he doesn't want uh I don't know how he figures out how people are going to be able to get from point A to point B if you don't have any more refineries.
So the Wall Street Journal today says we wondered when President Bush was going to don a cardigan, as he was talking about conservation.
Conservation is good.
And and uh when we get to the gouging is good part, I'll explain to you why that leads to conservation.
But the journal did say today, they said uh Mr. Bush got around to uh the real energy problem, which is the government policy has limited energy production so that a single big storm can deliver a supply shock that sends prices through the roof.
Are you listening, Dennis?
Rita alone shut down twenty-seven percent of our nation's capacity to refine crude oil in the gasoline and heating oil and other products.
Katrina had shut down ten percent.
So twenty-seven plus ten, thirty-seven percent got shut down during that period.
Now they're ramping back up as we speak.
Most of them.
Some of them are damaged and will take a month or two before they're back up.
But listen to this.
Here are the numbers from the journal.
In nineteen eighty-one, there were three hundred and twenty-five refineries in this country.
Three hundred and twenty-five.
They could produce eighteen million barrels a day.
They could process eighteen million barrels a day.
Today, there's not three hundred and twenty-five refineries, there's one hundred and forty-eight refineries.
And instead of eighteen million barrels, it's only they can do seventeen million barrels.
So they're doing pretty good.
Because they're almost the same as before with a lot less refineries.
But the problem is the demand for gasoline in this country alone, we're not this doesn't involve demand from China, India, any of the other expanding places.
This is just us.
Our demand for gasoline has increased more than twenty percent.
Now you wonder why haven't they invested more?
Well, because you don't get much of a return.
At least in the past you don't get much of a return, but you'll get more now, and maybe now you can start building refineries.
But there's a company down in uh Arizona again, the Arizona Clean Fuels Company out of Yuma.
They've been trying to build a refinery, but they've been working through the permitting process for nearly seven years.
And still no refinery.
Short break.
Um I want to get into this refinery business and uh gouging and the price of gas uh when we come back.
The phone number to join the program 800-282-2882.
My name is Tom Sullivan.
This is the Rush Limbaugh Program.
Welcome back.
Tom Sullivan in your radio, Rush is uh normally here.
He'll be back tomorrow, but uh meantime I am uh I am guiding through the golden EIB microphone all the issues regarding your uh your gas tank and uh it doesn't look good.
I uh it I mean it's gonna be expensive for a while, and the reason why it's expensive for a while, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, this gets real, real simple.
We are we are using more, and the refineries not a new one in twenty-nine years.
And what do you and and so you think the supply you think uh and this call call for conversation uh convers for conservation is going to uh actually lead to a drop in demand long term?
I don't think so.
You either get you've got either get technology to give us some sort of alternative fuel, which I know the Bush administration has increased the spending in that area for research and development in that area by many times what was previously spent on it, and that's been going on for a number of years.
It isn't something in the wake of the hurricanes.
Uh or we uh are we just continue to get the stuff from over there and be at their mercy.
Dave in uh Pittsburgh PA.
Hello, Dave, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Tom Sullivan.
Tom Sullivan, big fan.
Thank you for taking my call, sir.
You bet, thank you.
I was I oh you're welcome, sir.
I was listening to your comments about Mr. Kucinich.
You know what amazes me?
I'm on the road every day, and uh Instead of letting these energy companies invest their own money in infrastructure to create cheaper natural energy for us via natural gas or gasoline.
So basically, I guess when gas gets so high that I can't afford to drive and do my job every day, is he going to give me a gasoline stipend?
And also natural gas from my home heating bills in my house go to five and six hundred dollars a month.
Am I going to get something from the government to help me cover my game?
Uh-huh.
Well, speaking as a spokesman for Dennis Kucinich, yes, you will get here's what he's going to do for you.
He's going to uh uh tax the oil companies on those uh windfall profits, which was try by the way, that was done before back in the 70s, and guess what it led to?
Uh sitting in lines.
It led to a shortage.
It did not lead to anything, but but he's going to tax them, and then from there, he's going to figure out some way to take that money and uh put it into the U.S. Treasury and uh oh yeah, it still doesn't get to you, does it?
Well, Tom, you know what?
I was being facetious on that.
Little did I know that of course a liberal would have something to say about letting the government give us one more money than letting the companies use their own money to provide energy for the Well, where's it where's the solution here?
He's he's against he's against it.
And I could see if he had the same reason, if there was some reason that he felt passionate about, but he makes them up depending upon what the latest drilling uh proposal might be.
And uh yeah, you're right.
I mean, it's just one of those things where you go, uh have you looked around, Dennis, and and what are the people of Ohio?
Oh my gosh, the people of Cleveland, what are you doing?
I mean, when you go to the pump, think thank you, Dennis.
Thank you, Dennis.
I mean, that's that's how bad it is.
It's directly related to people like him that are leading the fight against these refineries.
I was telling you that we used to have three hundred and twenty-five refineries twenty years ago, twenty-four years ago, twenty-five years ago.
Now there's a hundred and forty-eight.
Our demand is increased by twenty percent.
Conservation will bring it down what?
Couple percent?
Let's go let's be generous and say five percent.
So we're still fifteen percent more than before, and this demand is going to increase.
The average return on investment in the refining industry, five and a half percent.
Capital will go to where money can be made.
And if you cannot, if you cannot make more than five percent in the refining business, you're going to put your money into something else.
And one of the one of the reasons for the low return on investment was because of the historically low gas prices that we've had, and so there wasn't uh there wasn't the kind of return that you could get.
Now what I'm I'm I'm working towards this gouging uh story, if you give them the opportunity to make more money, they will make more investment in the industry in the process.
They would love to build more refineries so they could sell more gasoline.
But they won't do it if the re if the return on investment is less than half what the SP industrials make of somewhere around almost thirteen percent.
So if you give them the chance to make some sort of uh of return on their investment, they will build more refineries and they will get more supply and they will drill for more oil, and they will therefore, and again, this isn't any harder than economics one hundred one.
Demand versus supply.
Demand is growing, supply is shrinking, prices have to go up.
So I'm not gonna say demand is gonna go down, but we need if we can increase supply, therefore the equation then switches to the point where if gasoline prices go up, they'll go up slower or possibly flatten out or maybe even come down if you get enough supply going.
But the only way you're going to get enough supply is to give them an incentive to go.
We're back to that word again.
This program's brought to you today by the word incentive.
But if you give them an incentive to go and invest in more drilling and more refinery and more capacity, then you and I will have the ability to buy gasoline not so expensive in the future.
Now, it's not like they haven't spent money.
Refiners have spent forty-seven billion dollars in just the last twelve years to meet the demands of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Oil Pollution Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Comprehensive Environmental Response Act, the Compensation and Liability Act.
And there's fourteen more new environmental, major environmental programs that are online to uh kick in between uh next year and two thousand twelve.
Fourteen more.
They've already spent forty seven billion dollars.
And so you wonder why would anybody why would anybody want to invest in a refinery?
That's where we made uh we need to make some changes.
We'll be back.
You're listening to Rush Limbaugh on the excellence in podcasting network.
Welcome back, uh Tom Sullivan with you, just uh following along with the uh news out of Washington today that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has been uh one one indict one count of uh one indictment from Texas grand jury, it has to do with uh campaign contributions in Texas, uh corporate con uh contributions to uh to uh uh a committee that somehow uh they say goes uh over to some candidates, and because of that that's illegal in Texas.
And uh Tom Villet is uh released a statement saying that these uh there's no basis in facts of the law, it's just another example of Ronnie Earl misusing his office for partisan vendors.
Ronnie Earl's the attorney general there that has um or the district attorney that is a Democrat, and says it's a purely political investigation.
Well, this uh so delay has uh stepped aside as the majority leader, and uh Speaker Hastert has tapped David Dreyer from California to be the uh temporary majority leader in the House.
Um I don't know what this does uh from a political strategy point of view, but uh takes delay out of the chair during the next year, and the elections are just what, uh a month and a year away, the midterm elections.
Alex in Martinez, California, the home of designer gasoline refineries.
Hi, Alex, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Yeah, Tom.
Um I'm quoting him from the Lundberg ladder.
In the early nineties, the profit margin of refineries were about three percent.
Nowadays, in two thousand five, they are nine percent.
Okay?
Yep.
Eighty-seven refineries were shut down in ninety ninety one, ninety ninety-two because of the low uh profitability.
Yeah.
But the return of investment nowadays is nine percent.
And nine percent still and this is from Lundberg because nine percent still doesn't meet the average return from the SP five hundred industrials.
Well, nine percent is a fact, good uh return of investment.
All right.
It's a what?
I'm sorry you broke it.
A good return of an on investment.
Um, but you've got to come you've got to compare it to where else money can go, and and the average on the SP five hundred is uh uh is uh twelve point seven percent.
So I mean it's it's good, but it's not as good as someplace else, and money flows like a magnet to the best return.
But anyway, go on.
You're nine.
Well, nine's fine, but it's uh it's better elsewhere.
Not well I I wouldn't think so.
Uh regardless.
Uh that's I I look I know what this is what I do for a living.
I'm an investment person.
I run an investment company.
That's what I do day in and day out.
It's 12.7% is the average return on the SP 500 industrials.
Oh well, oh maybe over the the last ten years.
That has not taken care of the last four years because the last four years were way down.
Uh you know that yourself.
Uh no, that's not true.
Where are you getting your numbers?
Well, that's that's uh I you uh you're talking out of a hole in your head.
I mean I'm telling you, Alex, I mean, it's one thing for you to call up and quote from the Lundberg letter, and I believe their numbers, and that's all very interesting, but it still goes to the fact that uh when you invest in something, it first of all, even if you could, even if you could,
let's say, all right, I'll accept nine percent, even though I can get twelve, thirteen percent on average elsewhere, I'll take my money and invest it in something that doesn't make as much as elsewhere, but but the process to get a refinery built is to the point where no refineries are being built.
I mean, you cannot argue with twenty-nine years.
Why have we not had one stinking refinery built in twenty-nine years?
Well, they were shut down, and that's that's just that simple.
They were not plasticable, period.
Well, there was a period back in the in the eighties where that was very much true where we were looking at oil that got down into the low teens.
Uh in fact, if I want to say it got down to nine or ten dollars a a barrel and now we're at sixty-five dollars a barrel.
So now it's profitable, and now they instead of shutting in the production, they're now have the money to go out and actually dig more m more wells.
Sure.
And and theoretically, I mean the idea is they're you know, greed is good to use that line.
Uh they'll go out and try and try and find some more so they can sell it at some high price to you and me.
I agree.
But conditions have changed considerably in the Middle East.
But we're I know that has contributed a lot to high oil prices well.
In the in the in the meantime, well, I I mean you can point the finger all over the place through the whole supply chain, but but when in the meantime we're sitting there going, how do we how do we get uh new technology?
I heard Ford talking about uh the chairman of Ford was uh talking the other day about the fact that they want to ramp up some more of these hybrid vehicles, but they're talking about a ten year time frame.
Nothing's gonna take per take uh some sort of solution to this fast.
Not even close.
Alex, thanks for the call.
Wanda in Tombstone, Arizona.
Hello, Wanda, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Uh thank you for taking my call, Tom.
I uh wanted to know what kind of businesses would want to go into Louisiana and that southern Gulf Coast.
If you look at uh a map, anything below I ten and I twelve is all lakes and low land and rivers, the whole state of Mississippi and and uh Louisiana is crisscrossed with rivers and lakes, and it's also an area that's constantly hit with with hurricanes.
Yeah, you know, constantly.
Yeah, we're and we're in this um Max Mayfield from the National Hurricane Center says we're in another cycle of uh of of more hurricanes coming.
It's a good question.
In fact, going back to Kathleen Blanco and her testimony before Congress this morning looking for more money for for them, uh she made this statement that I thought was uh it raised my eyebrows.
She said, and what we need is we need to get enough funds to be able to rebuild New Orleans so that it can uh s uh be protected from the ravages of hurricanes.
And I'm thinking, Lady, I know that what you're saying, but but Mother Nature is uh, you know, here in California where I'm talking to you from, we we spent billions on retrofitting our freeways and highways uh for earthquakes, and yet they still say over a certain number they're gonna come tumbling down.
And it's the same thing in New Orleans is that over a certain number of whatever the wind speed is, you're not gonna have a man-made project that's big enough or strong enough to be able to withstand the forces of nature.
So we can try.
Actually, I uh I I grew up in Seattle and Seattle is like uh a num I don't know, there's a handful of cities like this.
Seattle back in its early days burned to the ground.
It was kind of like a Chicago fire thing, but it burned to the ground and the and the seep the harbor uh was down right on the w on the waterfront.
There you can go to Seattle and take a tour of the underground city.
You go down there and there's old banks and everything else from the eighteen hundreds.
Because they built the city on top of the old city.
So I'm sitting there looking at New Orleans and going, does anybody in New Orleans want to take a look at Seattle and say, Oh, maybe we can build this thing on top of what was there?
I don't know.
Uh th there's some sort of idea, but you're not going to yeah, the question is, will people go there?
Uh the other issue about New Orleans that you've got to always remember for certain businesses, that is another one of the big choke points of how many things that you and I get at the store that came through the mouth of the Mississippi on a ship.
So transportation and shipping and distribution, uh, that whole area is is uh absolutely absolutely ripe for it.
Helen in uh Baton Rouge.
Hello, Helen, how are you doing?
Hi, how are you?
I'm fine.
Good.
Um I wanted to call about the comment that Michael Brown made about Louisiana being dysfunctional.
Yeah.
And I wouldn't say that yes, I'm from Louisiana.
And yes, on many levels, the state is dysfunctional, and we accept that not not like we like it, but we're aware of it.
Yes.
But this and we're dysfunctional in the regard that we have been able to convert our natural resources into wealth, but haven't really done a good job of converting that wealth into an infrastructure, roads, public schools, etcetera.
But on some levels, our state is very functional on some things that are harder to measure.
And you can see it in the way that our cities are functioning after this disaster.
Um we have a very strong community.
Lots of people own small businesses here.
Eighty-five percent of the people who live in this state were born here, and they don't stay here just because they cannot evacuate.
They can't afford to evacuate the state.
They're here because of something very strong.
I mean, we're the number two state in the country for people who live here who are actually born here.
Go ahead.
I was going to say that's actually fairly typical.
I remember a study that was done about these small towns that have lumber mills as their only source of employment.
And when the lumber mills shut down, 90 percent of the people stayed, even though there was no further employment.
So people do stay.
We have we most of us have roots, and you stay in your community.
Right, and we have very strong sense of community, and you can sense it in Baton Rouge where I am, and in Lafayette, where most of the people I know have families and friends living with them who had to evacuate from either New Orleans or Lake Charles.
Um our traffic is gridlocked, but at the same time you don't hear people honking horns.
I know it's it's it's a highly city.
I have spent some time in in your state and uh in Baton Rouge I've been in many, many times, and it's uh a lovely, lovely city.
I love Baton Rouge.
I think it's very stately, but I'll tell you uh this the part that's bothering me about all of this is that the people of this country, as you can tell from the donations that have been going to all these various charities, the people of this comp uh country are reaching out to you and saying, let us help you in any way we possibly can.
Then the problems come up with the politicians and Louisiana politics is famous for uh for its Louisiana politics.
And uh and and we're going, but wait a minute, we don't want to give the money to somebody that's going to be corrupt and take the money and use it for their own benefit.
We want to help you, the people of Louisiana, the people of Mississippi, the people of Texas.
We want to help you.
Our our dilemma is how do we do that without being fleeced in the process?
That's that's the dilemma that I think is uh people are facing, but we wish you well.
Must take a break.
Phone number 800-282-2882.
Tom Sullivan's sitting in for Rush.
We're back.
Rush is back tomorrow, Tom Sullivan in uh for the duration of the program today.
So um so the problem is this.
No, we're we're not gonna build any new refineries, but but the problem is that the demand for petroleum products, according to uh Dow Jones, is expected to rise by one point six annually for the next twenty-five years.
That's as far as they're willing to project because they hopefully think that there's some other technology will come along.
So if our demand for petroleum products goes up by one point six, and by the way, petroleum products, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it's not just the stuff you put in your car.
Take a look around at the see the carpet you're walking on, see the shirt you might have on, pair of pants you're wearing, the plastic around your house or car.
All of this is made from petroleum.
So petroleum demand is going up, yet our refineries are already operating at ninety-five percent of capacity.
So if it's going to continue to rise the demand, where are we going to get it from?
We're going to have to import it.
And that is going to be costly.
It's going to be very costly.
Tom in Rapid City, South Dakota.
Hello, Tom.
How are you doing?
I'm doing fine, sir.
I uh just wanted your opinion on uh when's enough enough.
Um Exxon Mobile.
They're showing a hundred and twenty-two billion dollar profit.
They can build a lot of refineries with twenty-two billion dollar profit?
Yeah.
Or or revenues.
Uh profit.
Wow.
And uh that's pretty good.
Well, that's just one corporation.
Yeah.
So what are the others doing?
Uh so go check those numbers, but uh but it's a lot of money, so you say when's enough enough?
Well, it's uh the answer is real simple.
What when's when is it enough for you to buy their product?
Well they've got us over a barrel there.
Why?
Why?
Well, we have we have to buy their gas.
No, you don't.
Well, what else are we gonna do?
Oh, there's plenty of alternatives.
Steam engines.
Buses?
Buses.
Take a bus to work.
How about carpooling?
How about bicycling?
Well, in I'm serious.
I'm very serious.
There's a point.
There you say what how much is enough?
Enough is when you have reached a point.
There's a perfect example of this that happened to the cereal industry about three years ago.
Cereal industry, then they weren't in cahoots, they were just watching each other.
They decided, uh huh, we're gonna charge more for your breakfast cereal.
And they jacked up the price and they jacked up the price and they jacked up the price, and guess what happened to cereal?
Sales dropped like a rock.
Guess what happened to the price of cereal?
It came back down again.
The marketplace is the best place.
You're leading me right into, and I I don't want to do it before we go back into the top of the hour.
Uh, but I'll start the next hour, I promise, on this uh in praise of gouging piece from the Wall Street Journal.
It is it is uh this is totally about driving the price to the point where demand will be reduced.
And that's what happened to cereal, and it can happen to any other product or commodity out there, and that is what you do.
It's a simple process that you determine, you determine what it is.
You don't have to buy their product.
Yes, it's in a lot of things.
Like I said, it's in carpet and it's in clothing, it's in plastics.
It's in a lot of places.
But uh in the meantime, there are things that you can do, and I'm not exaggerating.
You could you might change your you might change your lifestyle.
But you can change the way that you're living to where you reduce the amount of gasoline that you buy.
Am I suggesting that you're not going to buy any more?
No.
But uh you can certainly reduce it, and I think it's uh not that uh uh not that crazy.
There's places all over the world that uh get about in transportation totally different than we do.
And yet we are uh you're in you're in South Dakota, I mean, it's just uh I don't know, there's got to be other ways of of of carpooling and things like that, like the president was talking about, doing less driving.
Doing anything.
Conservation will make a big dent in demand, and that will make a big dent in price.
We'll be back.
Phone number eight hundred two eight two eight eight two, Tom Sullivan sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
Yeah, we have choices in this country.
Nobody uh nobody makes it buy anything, and we can uh we have a lot of influence, folks.
We have a lot of influence.
And this uh this three dollar number, I think has been a magic number for a lot of people.
They've said that's it, I'm making a change.
And that's why demand has been down.
Demand has dropped off the last couple of weeks.
Gas uh Lundberg survey did a uh last two weeks gasoline prices down twenty cents.
Why?
Don in uh Poplar Bluff, Missouri.
Hello, Don, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Good morning, uh good afternoon.
How are you doing?
Good.
Hey, listen, the the thing that I I keep hearing is uh, you know, we're stepping back, we're stepping back on production, we haven't got enough uh refineries online.
Hey, the simple matter uh simple fact of the matter is we are running out of petroleum.
Now, last I don't know, a couple of weeks ago, uh in a in a Springfield, Missouri newspaper, it must have been a uh some kind of wire article or something, it was talking about the petroleum uh peak uh production uh date as being Thanksgiving this year.
And then some other scientists were saying that they didn't believe that that was that was actually true.
But it brings up the fact that, you know, we have really got to get serious with alternative fuels in this country.
Now, uh I drive my car and I I like all of that stuff, and uh I'm uh I want to drill wherever we can to get it, but uh do you believe is uh that we have a finite amount of oil or do you believe that it's just gonna go on forever?
Well we're we're running into capacity of uh processing it and producing it, but there's more out there.
It's just a matter of letting uh letting the the the relaxation of uh rules for people to go get it.
It's there.
But right now, yeah.
There's a big demand and a low supply.
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