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Oct. 12, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:29
October 12, 2005, Wednesday, Hour #2
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America's anchorman seated and ready to go for the second hour of broadcast excellence today behind the golden EIB microphone, Rush Limboss serving humanity simply by showing up.
Also known as Uberman.
Telephone number 800 282-2882.
The email address is rush at EIB net.com.
Look, I'm going to take the occasion of Trudy's call to stay focused on this because there's too many, there are too many uh glittering jewels here in the audio sound bites to help me make the case.
But I do want to tell you there's some fabulous news out of Iraq regarding the Constitution, and this letter that uh has been intercepted between um who is Zakawi and Zawahiri pretty much establishes everything we've been saying about Al Qaeda and Iraq and how they're on the ropes.
And I I'm not gonna forget that because you know, as I've always said, I do not allow single issues uh to keep me from delving into other relevant and important matters.
So I have that here ready to go, and I'll get to it as soon as I finish this, we get some of your phone calls on and about this, and uh plus lots of other stuff as well, too.
All right, I just finished uh a heartfelt honest explanation and answer to Trudy from Bloomington, Illinois, regarding her questions.
And I know that the question that she asked represents uh the the feelings and the thoughts of many of you out there.
Let me now try to buttress my points.
Good old Justice Stephen Breyer is continuing to speak.
We have some sound bites from him.
He was uh speaking Monday in Washington at a symposium on public service and international law.
Now, Breyer, Briar is a known commodity.
He was a liberal when he was nominated, he was a liberal when he was confirmed, and he's a liberal on the court.
And the liberals didn't have to be stealth about him, and uh Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she's a liberal when she's nominated, and she's a liberal on the court, and they didn't have to be stealth about her and sneak her in, and both these judges were approved with pretty good margins.
Here is Justice Breyer once again talking about foreign law, and this is this goes right to the point that I was trying to make to Trudy, and I have for several uh several weeks, months, if you will, on this program about what's wrong with certain kind of judges and why we need others.
Listen to Briar with first of a few bites here.
Nations all over the world have followed our lead or the lead of other places, adopted constitutions that basically assure democracy, that are protective of human rights, and that try to do so in part by relying upon independent judiciaries.
Well, if that is the world, we can learn something perhaps by looking at how they, in a few cases anyway, that raise comparable problems, interpret comparable documents, comparable provisions, protective, let's say, of human liberty.
I'm not saying we'd follow them.
We might learn what not to do.
But let's read them.
After all, they're written by judges.
So what?
That's the point.
So they're written by judges, and that makes them infallible.
Look, you can read all you want, Justice Breyer.
You can you can read and inform yourself all you want about what other nations are doing, but unless it's in our constitution, it is irrelevant when you are deciding constitutional law that comes before you in the form of cases at the Supreme Court.
It's just that simple.
But if you're gonna have a personal view, what Justice Breyer obviously does, a personal view that what they're doing around the world is something that we can learn from that may be independently speaking.
But if it's not in our constitution, it ought not be in anybody's reasoning or anybody's decision making when it comes to deciding law in cases that come before the Supreme Court.
What Justice Breyer is essentially saying here is that there are certain things that go on in this country that he disagrees with, and he may find better way of handling them in foreign countries, and since he's a judge, and since Other judges are writing these things in other countries.
Why, it would be silly not to incorporate them.
That is 180 degrees out of phase, and it is precisely why I have this profound concern of the direction the court's heading.
And there are people, ladies and gentlemen, who have written and who are on benches on courts deciding cases now, who have with uh undergone the scrutiny and the attempts to have their minds changed.
Uh uh public pressure, political pressure, and they have stood fast, they've remained solid in their beliefs on the Constitution.
And so there those people can be identified, and there's no guesswork about it.
And I guarantee you, if you find this kind of judge, you're gonna get the right thing on Roe versus Wade, but you're also gonna get the right thing on all kinds of other cases that come before it too.
This business, do you know that foreign law was used to overturn 19 CERN on sodomy?
Who was foreign law Justice Kennedy cited it.
Well, what good is any law in any state if nine lawyers at the Supreme Court can find what they're doing elsewhere around the world and say, you states are so far behind the curve, you don't know what you're doing.
They're way ahead of us on this, say in Belgium.
And so we're gonna make we're gonna incorporate the thing in Belgium into our decision on this case.
Sir, not in the Constitution, you can't do that.
And once this started with Roe versus Wade, and this is the big argument that people have.
This start once you start finding things that aren't there and pretending that they are, or inserting them yourself as a judge, the Constitution becomes meaningless, folks.
All this rigamarole and hoity taughty talk about human rights and civil rights and democracy, all of it would be meaningless.
The only way it would have meaning is if a majority of judges agreed on some civil right or human right or whatever, where they want to create a new one that's not in the Constitution.
That's not how these things happen.
The laws are not written by judges, not supposed to be.
Laws are written by elected representatives in Congress and the state legislatures.
If they want to go foreign law, if they want to make a bill out of it, and they can convince enough members of Congress as elected officials we've sent there to do so and then get the president sign it, well then fine.
But this is not how this is supposed to happen.
And Breyer knows I think he's under the gun.
He won't stop talking about this.
He's got a book out about it now.
This is an argument going on within the court itself.
You've got Scalia and Thomas, and you had Rehnquist, who are dead set against all of this.
We don't know where Harriet Myers comes down on this.
We might find out in the hearings, but we don't know now.
But there are plenty of other people out there whose opinion on this we do know.
Uh here's another portion of Breyer's remarks.
Don't remain behind a veil of ignorance.
Read it when it's relevant.
And there are cases I know, I think, what is upsetting.
The cases that have come up where this has been done recently involve a statute involving homosexual conduct and the death penalty for 17-year-olds.
We said that the statute was unconstitutional, and we held five to four in both cases.
In the death penalty case, we said that the constitution could not, the cruel and unusual punishment clause said you could not execute a 17-year-old.
One who was seventeen when he committed the crime.
Those are very controversial topics.
Very controversial.
They referred very briefly to foreign law, but it's very hard for anyone to say that that was the basis of the opinion.
It isn't hard at all.
All you got to do is refer to it and find that one country disagrees with executing 17-year-olds, make it the law here, and it has formed a basis, and that is exactly what happened.
You sense the defensiveness here.
So he just got through saying that they overturned two cases.
The uh sodomy uh homosexual conduct and the death penalty for seventy.
Well, those are state laws.
The states had passed those laws.
The U.S. Constitution did refer, or the U.S. Supreme Court did refer to foreign law and then overturned them both.
Uh just because the 5-4 majority on the court.
Simply that.
There's nothing in the Constitution about it.
They just they they relied on uh foreign law in their own interpretation.
What, Mr. Snerdley?
What are you having a cow about in there?
What?
Uh well, I know when the when the foundation's laws, 17-year-olds were uh executed at the time.
See, brings up another point for all of you.
Well uh uh the Constitution, sexual conduct does d does uh it's a miraculous document.
It is written to uh apply and to be adaptable to modern times.
You know how?
You can amend it.
But you don't amend it by having the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court institute their own personal policy preferences for it.
There's an amendment process.
Hard to amend the Constitution.
They did that on purpose too, but there's a constitutional way to change the Constitution, but it isn't this way.
This is not the way it happens.
Here's one more from Justice Breyer.
Wife is a psychologist.
Therefore I believe in the phenomenon of displacement.
Displacement means when you're angry at A, blame B. Joanna says says I do that, and she is the victim of this.
But but nonetheless, displacement.
Perhaps that's underlying this whole problem.
Because if I look back into the history of the Supreme Court since 1808, indeed, there were loads of citations of foreign cases.
Okay, so now we're going to use psychology to uh explain our decisions, and we're going to use psychology to criticize the critics of uh of these decisions.
All right, I have to take a break here, but when we come back, I've got one more Briar, maybe, but definitely a uh 44-second little gem from Judge Roberts during his confirmation hearings.
Sit tight.
We'll be right back.
All right, here's Briar's conclusion now to this symposium on Monday on public service and international law.
Anyway, as I see it, I've tried to explain to you why I think that's the world that we live in, why I think it's terribly important in so many areas.
Not just the high visibility ones.
Of course.
To make international foreign law, what happens in other places part of the life that you in fact lead as a professional that inevitably draws our uh uh our court into it too.
It's not inevitable.
I think that the ultimate objective is what Father Dryan said.
Oh, ultimately objective is the law that works better for average Americans.
Will it happen?
I hope so.
I think so.
And uh anyway, that's my side of the argument.
There may be others too.
There are very much for listening.
All right, now uh he he goes Father Dryan, a well-known documented lib.
Father Dryden, the ultimate objective is a law that works better for average Americans.
Folks, that is legal mumbo jumbo, it is gibberish, it is liberal social feel-goodism, it is absolutely uncalled for on the United States Supreme Court.
The ultimate objective is not a law that works better for average Americans.
That's not at all what the law is, and yet here's a Supreme Court justice citing international law, encouraging everybody to go look at it, find a law that's better for average Americans.
A purely political statement.
Disguised as erodite thinking.
So to refute this, who better to turn to than the new chief justice himself?
Judge Roberts, let's go back to September 15th of 2005.
Senator Dick Durbin thinking he was gonna nail Judge Roberts here.
Basically rephrasing what you just heard Breyer say, the ultimate objective is a law that works better for average Americans.
Durbin's question.
I said at the outset that I thought one of the real measures as to whether you or not you should be on the Supreme Court goes back to a point Senator Simon had made.
Would you restrict freedom in America or would you expand it?
When you were defending gays and lesbians who are being restricted in their rights, their rights by the Colorado Amendment, were you trying from my point of view to expand freedom in America?
That to me is a positive thing.
That's my personal philosophy.
That's my point of view.
But when you say if the state would have walked in the door first to restrict freedoms, I would have taken them as a client too.
I wonder where are you?
Beyond loyalty to the process of law, how do you view this law when it comes to expanding our personal freedoms?
Same thing as Dryden saying uh we need law that works better for average Americans.
Durbin said, is it important enough for you to say in some instances I will not use my skills as a lawyer because I don't believe that that's a cause that's consistent with my values and beliefs?
That's what I've been asking.
Now, this answer is 44 seconds.
He just in in 44 seconds, John Roberts destroys the whole notion that the purpose of law is social activism, uh uh making law fair and better for average Americans and all that.
Here is his answer.
I had someone ask me in this process.
I don't remember who it was.
Um but somebody asked me, you know, are you going to be on the side of the little guy?
And uh you obviously want to give uh an immediate answer, but as you reflect on it, uh if the Constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy is going to win in court before me.
But if the Constitution says that the win, well then the big guy's gonna win.
Because my obligation is to the Constitution.
That's the oath.
The oath that a judge takes is not that I'll look out for particular interests, I'll be on the side of particular interests.
The oath is to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States.
What I would do.
And he has just, in the process of nuking Durban, he's just nuked just Justice Breyer as well.
Little guy should win, he's gonna win it.
The big guy's gonna win, and that's he's gonna win.
That's my obligation.
That's the oath.
The oath that a judge takes is to not is not that I'll look out their interests, particularly my own.
I'll be on the side of particular interest, and of the oath is to uphold the Constitution and laws.
Let's go back to Breyer.
Here's the topper.
Breyer is explaining how he looked to French law in a case concerning the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.
Now, I you can try to follow this and note that that our Constitution uh is not mentioned.
This is Altman, who had an uncle who lived in Vienna when the Nazis were there.
He left, his paintings stayed, and the six climped paintings that he owned end up in the museum where they are now, and she's brought a lawsuit.
Can she do so under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act?
The key case that explained the concept to me of what this act is about.
I found it, don't tell anyone.
I found it in an intermediate appeals court in Paris, which had the famous case of Christian Dior against King Farouk.
The ex-King Farouk, very important, because the question was, can Christian Dior sue ex-King Farouk for the bill for his wife's clothes, or uh is it in fact that he enjoys sovereign immunity?
Well, said the court, you did, but you're no longer king, and therefore pay up.
All right, that was enlightening to me, that case.
Uh uh, and indeed it helped.
Uh Mrs. Altman.
Well, I'm not a legal scholar here, but if the case being decided is about the foreign sovereignty's immunity or foreign sovereign immunities act, and of course you decided on that basis.
Uh this case involved things that happened in Vienna and in Paris and so forth.
That's not what we're talking about with the the in importing foreign law.
I don't know, folks.
I I just I use all of this to for one reason, and that's to try to underscore to all of you who think that I am opposed to Harriet Myers simply because I'm joining a crowd, or because I don't like what the president did.
These things all matter to me.
Uh and and the, you know, it's all it's about far more than one case, Roe v.
Wade.
Do you talk about big guys winning and little guys winning?
Look at Kelo.
Now, according to Father Dryden, the Kilo decision should have been decided in favor of the little guy.
But I'll bet you, and that would not have been how it was decided.
The kilo was decided in favor of the big guy.
And Kelo was decided, by the way, in in a way that the Constitution doesn't say.
They're having now to go to Congress and rewrite the Fifth Amendment, the eminent domain clause, because it was misinterpreted by the Constitu by the by the Supreme Court.
You really as few liberals disagreed with Keelo.
Do you know why few liberals disagreed?
And a lot of people said, oh, this is a decision that favors big developers.
This is this is a decision of big money guys, and this is what's wrong with it.
No, it's not.
Kilo's decision favors government.
That's why the liberals liked it.
It gave government all kinds of power.
Government can kick the little guy out of his and her homes and sell those homes to a big developer who's going to pay a higher tax base.
To the government.
Well, that's not what the takings clause was about.
It's not what it is about.
It's just been bastardized.
And it gets bastardized because you have justices on the court who will sit there and impose their personal policy preferences rather than try to get the original intent of the Constitution.
So I hope all of this has helped.
We're going to move on here.
Got some of your phone calls and other things in just a second.
Hi, welcome back.
Great to have you folks.
Having more fun than a human being.
Should be allowed to have Rushlin bought talent on loan from God.
Let's grab calls about this.
Patrick in Gross Point, Michigan, your next.
Hello, sir.
Oh, Megadiddos with a qualification here.
I think we need to bite the bullet here on Myers and go ahead and drop the uh hostility and get behind her because we can't beat that gang of seven on this.
I don't see us getting a better nominee if even anything.
So you're saying that this is John McCain's fault.
Yeah, I'm saying ChaP and Snow and actors are just not going to let us get somebody with a paper trail through.
All right.
Now, many of you, I'm glad you called Patrick.
I appreciate your point of view, but I want you to keep your radio on.
His point is the GOP is ripping itself to shreds over this.
There's internal strife.
There's division.
We ought to just unify behind Myers and get the best we can.
We should settle.
Now many uh many of you uh believe that this probably is uh folks having more if it's very bad.
You're watching this, I would like to take you back to what I said yesterday.
It's very important uh that you people effort to listen to this program every day.
As I couldn't disagree with all due respect, Patrick, any more with you than I do.
I don't think that when we are the majority in the House and Senate and we have the White House, we settle.
I don't think we settle.
I don't think we need to settle for anything, and I'm gonna tell you, all of you who think that this dissension in the ranks is going to lead to the destruction of the so-called conservative movement of the Republican Party, uh-uh.
I want to remind you that what's happening right now is that conservatives who have held their nose for a number of years over a lot of things, finally have reached a tipping point.
And when the last time, the last time the conservative movement unified like this, and the last time that it insisted, and the last time it said, okay, we you know, we've we've been doormats and we've been nice guys, we've been getting you elected, but then you turn around and turn into your old country club blue blood herself.
The last time this happened was 1976, with the attempt to get Ronald Reagan nominated to the uh Republican uh presidential nomination at the convention in Detroit in 1970, or not Detroit, where was it?
It was Detroit and 80, but in 1976, failed to Gerald Ford.
But that led to 1980.
I said yesterday that if any liberals in this audience are sitting out there all giddy and rubbing your hands together in glee, thinking that this rift means the end of your think again, because the last time this happened, it led to two landslides, 1980 and 19 war.
The fact of the matter is that it's conservatives who elect Republicans in this country.
And when the cur when the conservatives get plastered enough, mad enough, uh they get in gear and uh things change for the better.
So I I I totally reject the notion.
The Republican Party may be damaging itself, but I don't look at that as the conservative movement, which is not a party damaging itself.
Uh and I I think I think there are some Republicans here who are doing things they really don't want to do, saying things they really don't want to say, saying things they regret having to say, and but they have to say them, it's their job.
But I Think that's going to happen here is a stronger movement uh when this is all said and done.
Conservatism is about a set of principles and a core set of beliefs and you don't settle.
You don't sell them out.
And if if if at times you do, then the the day is going to come, we say not anymore.
Not doing it anymore.
And uh we may be close to one of those moments now.
Richard, I'm sorry, Michael in Covina, California.
Hi, you're next.
Mega Ditto's Rush.
I can't believe I finally got to say that to you.
I've been listening to you since I was about thirteen, and I started listening because I found someone who spoke for me on the radio, and I feel like you still do.
I'm concerned that Bush did sell me out here.
Uh I don't think you've been on a tirade.
I'm like Trudy.
I went door to door for Bush.
I made the phone calls, I put in the legwork.
You know, and I all because of my deep commitment to to my faith, to my principles.
I voted for Bush because I present me and represent my views.
And you know, sometimes it hasn't felt like he has.
You know, the vouchers, the education, you know, s the spending, uh, illegal immigration.
But after all that, I stuck through.
I'm I'm hanging with Bush because of the Supreme Court nominee.
That's why I was out there.
That's why I supported Bush.
And Rush, you speak for us.
I think we need to be cautious and maybe even concerned here.
I'm I'm worried.
I uh I hear people like Trudy say, Well, you know, I I was behind Bush, I voted for Bush, I didn't vote for these guys.
Well, I voted for Bush too, and he's done things that have let me down, and I'm I'm concerned when he was on the uh when he uh nominated people to the Supreme Court of Texas, there were people there I didn't agree with.
And his very first term as president, he nominated two Clinton appointees to the court.
I think there were terrible appointees.
He played politics with it back then, and I'm worried that he might be po playing politics with uh with the Myers nomination.
With Roberts, I know it wasn't really clear whether or not he was pro-life or whether he was gonna overturn Roe versus Wade, but I was with worried this uh a firm judicial philosophy that I could support.
He was a constitutionalist, he's an originalist, and no originalist could support Roe vs.
Wade because of the right to privacy.
It's just not in the Constitution.
So I'm confident with with Roberts.
But with Myers, I don't know.
She they say she's an evangelical.
Well, Anthony was supposed to be a devout Catholic.
I'm ashamed of Anthony.
I'm a devout Catholic.
I feel betrayed by him.
They talk about Exodus Ministries.
Trudy brought that up.
But you know, this uh Exodus Ministries, there's a homosexual one and there's one that works with uh, you know, uh uh ex-convicts, and that's the one that Myers was working with, not the homosexual uh ministry.
She said that her favorite justice was Warren, and then she kind of fudged and she said it was uh Warren Berger or not.
And I'm I'm concerned about that statement.
That worried me.
And I also found out I I read an article that Bush's second choice was if it wasn't Myers, it it might have been somebody worse.
I don't know if uh that's reliable information.
But I have no briefs like you.
I I quote you on that.
I think you're right.
I've no brief against Myers, but I am concerned that this is gonna be like O'Connell or or Kennedy.
I uh and I have to say, Rush, you speak for us.
I'm I'm I I love listening to you because you're not like all the other talk show hosts who are just rah-rah Bush.
You have solid principles, you're pro-life, you're against uh aristocracy, you know, uh uh just the Supreme Court ruling the nation and not the people.
And uh and I and I support you.
And I'm scared that after this happens, after this nomination goes through, if it doesn't work out in two thousand six, people like me who've been putting in the time, we're gonna stay home, and maybe we'll go out and vote, but we won't go down for that extra hour of making phone calls.
We won't be motivated to go out there and spend those extra hours in the hot sun going door to door.
And we need that in order to win.
And I I I feel betrayed.
I feel like we could have got somebody better.
And uh maybe I'm wrong, and I hope and I pray that I'm wrong.
But if if I'm if I'm wrong, if I'm right, uh I think the the consequences are dire uh for this uh administration.
Well, you're proud of the I appreciate what you're saying about some of this.
I uh about most of this disagree with uh with some of it.
Uh I d uh the consequences being dire uh to the administration.
Well, that's that's loaded because dire how.
I mean, uh when you talk about dire consequences to an administration, you're basically talking about uh their re-election chancellors, so that's that's that's not on the table.
This administration is not gonna be running for re-election again.
Uh the presidential campaign's gonna kick up uh in earnest in uh a little over a year, uh, which will change the focus, and which is one of the one of the reasons why I've actually thought that the president's window of opportunity for these nominations is not the full eight years that he had, because he didn't have any choices to make in his first term.
There weren't any vacancies.
Now he's had two here, uh, and and there will be a third.
Uh is not gonna be running.
It it boils down to I I think all of the criticism of this is being assumed by some listening to it that it it constitutes a sellout or an abandonment of the administration and of the uh of the president, and it doesn't mean that at all.
Now I've tried to address that in the last week, too.
The president gave a la a great speech last week on uh the war on terror in Iraq, and I said then that when uh it is incumbent upon us, and we must we feel compelled to when we feel that.
Uh that this is this does not that this is this does not be running disloyalty or abandonment at all.
Uh it's I mean, folks, you anybody that that that wants me to uh say what you want to hear on this, you're you're actually asking me not to be me.
So that you'll be comfortable uh listening to me, and you know you're not comfortable listening to me be at odds with this particular nomination, and I you know I'm I'm I'm gonna be me.
Uh I'm I'm just always have and always will, and you're the audience, you're the choice that these uh comments are aimed at.
I'm not I'm not under any illusion that's no role in choosing this nominee.
I don't have any role in the fate of this nominee, and I don't live under the illusion that I do.
So it's not what this is about.
This is always to me about the future.
It's always about informing and educating.
This is something that will never stop.
It can never stop because it's a job that's never going to be completed, as this episode illustrates.
This is all about the desire, you know.
I was born and rear, and so you're the choice that was great.
And I'm trying to do my little part to see to it that those who come after me have the same opportunity when they were born.
I don't want to see a country that's that's that's not recognizable uh some years from now versus the one I was born into because somebody didn't take a stand about the role of the Supreme Court or some of these other issues.
Uh a lot of people are more immediately focused uh than than I am.
There's one issue out there that matters, we're gonna take care of this issue, and that's the big thing.
And I agree with the big issue, but there are others, and there's a hopefully a long future uh for this country.
And if you understand that I I totally believe that the way things happen in this country is with an informed, educated, participating public.
Because that's generally there are exceptions to everything, but that's generally how things get done.
And at that, I think is at the root of my disappointment for I can't tell you for how many years.
Since 1964, but since the 1950s, there have been people who've been trying to educate and inform as many people as possible so as to affect the outcome at the ballot box, to elect the people we support and believe in.
And this has taken a long time to do, but we've now done it.
And we've done it the legitimate way.
We have a genuine mandate.
We have people who have been elected to majority positions on the basis of their stance on issues.
It hasn't been accomplished with spin.
It hasn't been accomplished with intimidation or fear.
We haven't gone out there and bought the votes of the people that we want.
We have been communicating, I and others, I only in the last 18 years, others for much longer, ideas.
And it takes a long time to get those ideas cemented into the minds of a majority of voters, and now it's happened.
This was not the reason why.
Brief time out.
We'll be back in just a second.
And we're back.
Let me move on to some other things that might interest you today.
As you know, the president has assembled uh an advisory panel on tax reform.
So let me tell you what they are suggesting.
Meeting in Washington, the nine member panel agreed that it would be wise to reduce the total amount of mortgage debt for which interest is deductible.
The limit now for a couple and others jointly is one million.
They think a better idea might be $350,000.
Now I know that many of you think the mortgage interest deduction is sacred.
You don't touch it.
It's like Social Security.
And I know that a lot of you, you know, you're not going to go out and borrow a million dollars, mortgage a million dollars to build to build a house, but some of you might be mortgaging $350,000.
Some of you might be mortgaging $500,000.
But if they get their way here, uh the maximum you might be on your home mortgage interest would be $350,000.
And what's the direction that that's going?
From $1 million to $350,000 is that's going down.
It's being reduced once they start this.
See, this is the problem with all these reforms.
If they tell us that they're solving problems, when what they're doing is actually creating because now this when everybody, you know, when when they capped mortgage interest deductions in a million bucks, you know, 99.9% of the people, oh, it's five at me, it doesn't affect me.
I don't care about that.
Never never gonna happen to me, never gonna affect me.
Okay, you might wake up next year and find it's $350,000.
And as you look at the rising cost of housing, uh it's not out of the realm of possibility that you or your kids might be getting a mortgage someday that's over three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Now, I frankly have never been a big believer in it anyway, because I think it's social architecture.
I think it's a classic example of the tax code being used as social architecture.
I mean, why why be why you be able to deduct your interest on a mortgage and nowhere else?
They took it away from credit cards, what why?
Only because the government's trying to sponsor homeownership.
Why?
Because the home builder's lobby's probably got a big influence on them, has for a long time.
It's an American dream to be able to own a house.
Well, how many how many people actually go out and buy a house?
It's not something you can do.
Most people can't even go out and buy a car.
You gotta finance You have to finance your house.
So to make that I know I know homeownership is at an all-time high.
I know it is.
But you and our classic example, a lot of people, but when the mean price, the mean price of a home in in the in the country today is 400,000.
And if you look at the you look at California and uh and the uh parts of the right coast, the east coast, little starter fixer upper, close to a million dollars, depending on the neighborhood you put it in.
Uh I don't know what your down payment's gonna be on these.
I'm just telling you that the mortgage interest deduction, according to this advisory panel's on its way down, folks.
Uh-huh.
What?
What?
Uh so it's snerdily in there saying, screw that.
But it it is, it's on its way down.
See, government never cuts.
All these people were government cuts cut.
There aren't any government cuts.
They still need more money.
By the way, when you when you $650,000 from what people can deduct uh interest on in their mortgages, uh guess who's getting the lower end of that stick?
But that's not the only idea.
The panel also said that it might recommend limiting tax deductions for employer providing insurance.
It discussed putting a cap of about $11,000 per year uh per employee on the amount of premiums that employers could deduct.
Oh, I told you this was coming too.
I've been warning you people, I have been telling you that all of these little perks that you get, uh someday they're gonna be looked at as income, and you're gonna pay tax on it.
Well, they're going about it through the back door.
They're gonna make it tougher for businesses to deduct medical expenses as a business expense, therefore making it more expensive for businesses to offer these.
Now, the eleven thousand dollars per employee, pretty high ceiling yet, but that's on the way down too because now there's a cap.
So I just thought you'd be interested in this.
The media panic in New Orleans documented to be wrong on another item.
Details are coming up.
As well as uh a brief exploration of the letter from Zawahiri to Al Zakari about their objectives in Iran and their admission that they are losing.
Plus lots of other goodies too.
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