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Feb. 9, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:16
February 9, 2006, Thursday, Hour #3
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Welcome back to our community forum here at the Rush Limbaugh Program, Community Forum.
That's what I usually say in my local show.
In the Rush Limbaugh program here at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, and you can just jump right in at 1-800-282-2882.
And I wanted to get back.
In the previous segment, if you're just joining us, we were regaled by the thought that as Hillary Clinton and the socialist compatriot Bernie Sanders, Congressman from Vermont, are extolling the virtues of a new, quote, Marshall Plan, unquote, for GM and Ford.
The idea being that what GM and Ford really need is more money out of your paycheck into their coffers.
This is a serious proposal now by someone who wants to be the president.
Okay, stop laughing.
Because this caller pointed out, here's how bad it is at GM.
They actually have a labor contract with United Auto Workers that requires that if they have to lay anybody off the job, that somebody has to go to a job bank, basically a rec room, watch TV, read newspapers, as it was described here on the program, for eight hours, during which they are paid for doing nothing by GM at their previous rate of pay when they were doing something.
So now they don't build cars, but they do get paid.
Now, if this sounds like the farm program, I'm sorry, there are parallels here, but it doesn't make GM exactly a world player in competitive terms, does it?
Because Toyota doesn't do that, ladies and gentlemen.
So let's get some more detail.
Here's Chuck in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Chuck, welcome to the Rush Show.
Mega Dittos, Mega UAW Dittos.
I'm really nervous, so you'll have to excuse me.
First time caller.
Well, Chuck, I appreciate it.
Listen, I appreciate your call.
Now, just calm down, take a deep breath.
Tell me what you know about these job banks.
Okay, first of all, despite what your previous caller said, no, you can stay at home.
You have to go to your mailbox to pick up your check, you know.
I have to go to my mailbox?
Yeah, yeah, you know, it's hell.
Basically, what it is, is if they close down your plant within a certain distance, like I forget what it is, 50 miles or 100 miles, if there's no work available, you stay at home.
I have a friend, this is before I even started with, I've only been there 11 years in the UAW, but I have a friend who I knew before.
And when Electromotive in LaGrange closed down, he stayed at home.
And he picks up his check in the mailbox.
And it's amazing.
So he doesn't have to go to the job bank.
He doesn't have to read papers and watch TV at the job bank.
He stays home.
And how long has he been staying home and they pay him anyway?
It's been 12 years now.
12 years.
13 years.
I'm sorry.
13 years.
13 years.
Okay, 13 years.
He hasn't had to get another job.
Nope.
He sits at home.
Why would you?
Chuck, what do you think?
You're a UAW member, right?
Well, I'm probably going to be ostracized when I go back to work because I am one of the few conservative UAW members, you know.
Now, Chuck, let me just ask you, though.
Are you currently working, actually making cars?
Yes, making trucks.
Trucks.
All right.
So you're working at the plant.
You're making the trucks.
Your buddy's sitting home.
He's getting a check.
You're actually having to work for your check.
How is that fair?
Speaking of fair?
Well, there's so much in there that, you know, doesn't seem fair.
It's just, you know, it's amazing.
It's, you know, I couldn't go on and tell you, you know, how certain people have jobs that you just wonder, what are they doing?
I see them walking around all day, not carrying a clipboard or anything, just walking around.
You know, they're UAW members.
Like, well, you know, I want that job.
But maybe you haven't risen far enough in the ranks of the union.
Well, that could be, you know, and with my attitude of conservatives, I probably never will.
You probably won't.
That's exactly right.
You're not socialist enough to get those kind of jobs.
Yeah.
However, you know, for the first time.
They need conservatives.
Chuck, look at it this way.
They need conservatives to actually build the trucks.
The liberals are out getting the paycheck, but they don't want them near the actual machinery.
Right, right.
However, for the first time, I may vote for a Democratic president, you know.
Who's that?
Sounds pretty good if Hillary fails us out, you know.
Chuck, I appreciate your call.
You've done very well.
Thanks for calling the Rush program.
Ladies and gentlemen, is there any doubt in your mind why GM and Ford are having a problem?
They're having a problem because they cannot run a business.
They're running a welfare agency.
They're running the farm program.
They're running the federal government, a mini-federal government, more concerned about the health care benefits of retirees and people who aren't working than they are about producing a product people want to buy at a price they can afford to pay.
And like I say, you know, we talk about Japanese companies, Toyota, that have lifetime employment and you get guaranteed and there's none of this thing about capitalism like we have in the United States.
And I've heard all that from the left.
Wall Street Journal today carries this article, headline Toyota considers Michigan as site for new engine plant.
Toyota, which had formerly been, you know, around, what, Kentucky and Alabama and West Virginia and places like that where they have low taxes and no unions and all that, they're talking about going back into Michigan.
Now, where in Michigan are they going?
As they put it, although they put the state of Michigan among the top potential sites for their new engine plant, which would create hundreds of new jobs at a time when General Motors and Ford are cutting back, he says, well, it's southwestern Michigan, southwestern Michigan.
The areas around Kalamazoo and Battle Creek, that part of Michigan is more or less, as they put it, free of the influence of the United Auto Workers so that Japanese can set up a non-union plant, so that the people who will get paid and paid well will be people who are actually producing cars, not sitting home, you know, trudging out to the mailbox, working hard to get out that mailbox, get that check.
Come on, ladies and gentlemen.
The way to go on Ford and General Motors is to give them a subsidy out of your paycheck so more guys can sit home and get theirs?
That's the basis of Hillary's run for president?
My goodness.
Let me shift gears to the cartoons because I have been so glad to be joined by lots of other folks.
Andrew Sullivan's essay in Time for the February 13th edition, Time magazine, right on point.
Your taboo, not mine.
The furor over cartoons of Muhammad reveals the zealots' double standard, writes Sullivan.
Just a terrific, just a terrific expose, an essay on this whole thing.
Here's a little bit of it.
He writes, Muslim leaders say the cartoons are not just offensive, they're blasphemy, the mother of all offenses.
That's because Islam forbids any visual depiction of the prophet.
Well, should non-Muslims respect this taboo?
I don't see any reason why you can respect a religion without honoring its taboos.
I eat pork, and I'm not an anti-Semite.
As a Catholic, I don't expect atheists to genuflect before my altar.
If violating a taboo is necessary to illustrate a political point, then the call is an easy one.
Freedom means learning to deal with being offended.
Let me say this again.
Freedom means learning to deal with being offended.
Your being offended doesn't mean you can shut down my free speech.
That's what freedom means.
Sure, he says.
He says the West's principles are clear enough.
Tolerance?
Yes.
Faith?
Absolutely.
Freedom of speech?
Non-negotiable.
Good essay, and one that you should check out.
Finally, too, and let me praise, we'll get back to jobs here in a minute, but let me praise Condoleezza Rice again.
Our Secretary of State yesterday flat out, just went right for the jugular on these ginned-up cartoon-related Muhammad depicting demonstrations we've seen, burning and shooting and looting and so forth in the name of.
I mean, what do they think this is?
New Orleans?
Come on.
Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State, out saying, look, Syria and Iran, you are deliberately inciting this outrage so that you can get ordinary middle-of-the-road Muslims to agree with your extremist jihadist nonsense.
You're trying to make this violence a political issue for you.
Of course they are.
Of course they are.
And again, it's befuddled the poor Danes.
We're 3.5 million people, so tolerant and so diverse and so wonderful and so accommodating.
And how can you possibly burn our flag and burn our embassies and boycott our goods?
I mean, do that to the Americans, we understand, but doing it to us, we're so superior, we're so tolerant, we're so 21st century, and yet here you are attacking us.
Yeah.
Because you Danes aren't Muslim yet.
Now, were you Muslim, then there wouldn't be a problem.
See, this is the whole thing about the jihad.
So Iran and Syria came under fire today from Condoleezza Rice.
And God bless her.
Let's call it as we see it.
By the way, we have a chance in Syria.
Let's get rid of Assad, can we please?
Former Syrian Vice President Abdel Halim Kadam, the exiled leader of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.
These guys, they are extremists.
They are the jihadis, but they want to topple Bashar al-Assad, too.
Somewhere along the line, we've got to get rid of these dictators and start getting some people who make some kind of sense.
Don't we?
Somewhere?
Because otherwise, we're not headed toward the right road here.
I want to get back to this jobs issue.
Let me take a short break first.
Roger Hedgecock in for Rush back after this.
In fact, in our society, the jihad against Christianity continues.
In Deltona, Florida, the city has banned three paintings from a city hall display, paintings that were part of a Black History Month display because they contain references to the Christian faith.
A painting showing black history, referring, and let's see, there's a, I'm looking at the painting now, and here's the at a bedstand here with an alarm clock and a lamp.
There's a book, and you can just see the title of the book, O-L-Y, and below that, L-E, so it could be Holy Bible.
And because of that, you can't show that painting.
You can't show that.
Oh, my goodness.
And then there's, I see, oh, wait a minute.
I see part of an E and then an SUS.
That could be Jesus.
Oh, no, get that painting out of there.
Ho-ho!
Can't be offending anybody.
Unbelievable.
Free speech has got to mean something in terms of the free exercise of religion.
You know, I got my whole copy of the Constitution, the one before, you know, Earl Warren got a hold of it.
I've got one that has, you know, the First Amendment in its original form: no interference with freedom of religion and speech.
What happened to that?
Brian in Detroit, Michigan.
You're next.
Brian, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Program.
Hi, Roger.
Great to be on.
Thanks for taking my call.
I'm actually from Auburn Hills, Michigan, which Rush also refers to as, well, we can't really say it, but I'm right by the palace and the Silver Dome of Auburn Hills and Pontiac.
So I know a lot about this jobs bank.
Yeah, what about it?
What do you know?
I'd love to inform everybody who doesn't know anything about this.
Maybe I can be a guest teacher.
Anyway, in 1984, still reeling after half a million job loss from the recessions of the 70s and the 80s, the UAW felt they had to protect the workers that were left, so they came up with this contract.
I think it was 83 or 84.
And GM, Ford, Chrysler all agreed to contribute.
And GM is $2 billion into it.
DCX has set aside half a billion.
Ford has set aside almost a billion.
And there's currently 12,000 workers in the jobs bank that are being paid not to work.
And that's since 1984.
GM's got 5,000 in it.
Delphi has 4,000.
2,100 from Daimler Chrysler.
I mean, it just goes on and on and on.
Wow.
I'm in shock.
12,000 people are being paid not to work.
This is all off of Detroit News had a front page article on it that did a great job of highlighting exactly what the Jobs Bank is.
It was from October 18th of last year.
Anybody can Google that.
12,000 paid not to work.
Now, would I be wrong?
I mean, here I have known nothing about the auto industry.
Would I be wrong in assuming that this has got to be one of the big reasons why these companies are having problems and going into talking about bankruptcy, cutting back on further jobs, closing plants, not being competitive, et cetera?
Well, how can any company pay that amount of workers?
I mean, take the average salary of $27 to $31 an hour plus healthcare, $65 an hour times 12,000 people, and figure out what that cost per year.
And these are the people that were set aside.
These are the people that are displaced by if Ford, GM, or Chrysler has any innovation or any process improvement that takes them off the line, they're guaranteed the work.
So not only do they have to develop the cost and the equipment and pay other suppliers to develop that tooling and buy the tooling and install it and run it and function it, they still have to pay for the worker that they replaced.
So we're really saddling our auto industry here to become non-competitive.
But the thing is, the UAW contract is up in 07, I believe mid-07, and this is going to be a major sticking point because back in 84, we never knew that the you know, nobody could foresee what was going to happen the way things are nowadays.
Wow.
Well, Brian, you've done a real service.
Completely new information to me, and I appreciate the call here on the Rush Show.
Now, more information on the Toyota plant in Michigan from Jeff on a cell phone in Kalamazoo.
Hi, Jeff.
Welcome.
Hi, Roger.
Hey, last night, I just caught the end of what you're saying about Toyota.
And last night on Channel 8 News in Grand Rapids, I'm in Kalamazoo.
They had on there that Toyota is pulling the plug on the Southwest Michigan project for the engine plant because of the protests recently of UAW workers at where Toyota execs were having a meeting in Grand Rapids.
And they had that on, it was supposed to be a new story tonight, too.
They're doing some follow-ups on it about the pull of that engine plan of thousands of jobs.
So there's another boost of our economy in Michigan.
Thanks to the UAW.
In other words, the UAW, maybe it's because Toyota wanted to put up a plant where they were going to ask people to actually build engines.
So the UAW, the deal now is we want the jobs, but we don't want to actually do any work.
We just want the money.
You know, I have two GM vehicles, and it makes me, when I saw that last night, it makes me want to go test drive at Toyota this weekend and maybe put a down payment on one of those and start driving something else.
What an incredible planning.
What an incredible situation.
So you're saying the UAW union thugs went down and mau mowed this meeting in Kalamazoo or in that area and the Toyota people just so horrified at that said, okay, we're out of here.
Right.
That was on Channel 8 News just last night and this morning.
And they're having a follow-up story today on that.
And I think WoodTV8 has a website, and you can go to that and probably see it right on there.
We will do that, Keith, and I appreciate your call, Keith, on a cell phone there.
I'm sorry.
Jeff on a cell phone.
Let's go to Keith on a cell phone.
That's where I wanted to go.
Fort Worth, Texas.
Hi, Keith.
Welcome to the Russ Show.
Hey, how are you?
Good.
I'm calling about the tap issue that you were discussing earlier.
And I'm an attorney in Texas and have always been a Republican.
And I was extremely proud back during all the impeachment stuff with Clinton that the Republicans emphasized over and over and over: it's the rule of law, the rule of law, the rule of law.
It applies to everyone, and that's all we're trying to do is enforce the rule of law.
What disturbs me about the Republican response to the wiretap criticism is that the people are addressing the issue of the president should have the authority to check these al-Qaeda contacts, and I agree with that.
What I don't agree with is how nobody appears to be giving a reason why that FISA court deal either won't work or it will work, but it needs some kind of tweaking.
You would have expected people like Attorney General Gonzalez to have said, well, it'll work, but we need more time.
Even though we can get the warrant after the fact, we need five days instead of three days or whatever.
But I don't understand the rationalization because it is a law.
Well, let me try.
Let me try.
Let me try, Keith, because I think this is important for you to understand.
I am also a lawyer, although I'm a recovering lawyer.
I graduated from Hastings College of Law in San Francisco and the University of California system, and I've practiced law.
And so I understand what you're saying.
But what every president since Carter, when FISA was first put in in the late 70s, even Carter's people said, Article II during time of war overrides this.
Congress cannot, as the three co-equal branches of government, the Congress, as one of those, cannot interfere with the duties of another co-equal branch of government.
The president under Article II, as the Commander-in-Chief during war, has the duty to defend and protect the United States of America.
Congress cannot impose on that duty restrictions that keep him from doing it, which is what Gonzalez did explain last Monday in this hearing.
FISA does not work in this modern era of communications.
And that's, I think, as simple as I can make it.
Welcome back to the Rush Show.
Love this bumper music.
1-800-282-2882.
And shakedown.
I'm speaking of lawyers.
Lawyers know how to conduct activities that would be otherwise labeled with such unpleasant labels such as shakedown, blackmail, bribery.
Those kinds of things can be done by lawyers in a way that, well, gets the same objective, you understand, but doesn't seem so unseemly.
For example, a letter has now been taken to the White House by to White House Counsel Harriet Myers, by the way, dated February 6th from Michael Brown's lawyer, Andrew W. Lester.
And according to CNN.com, Michael Brown, of course, the former disaster agency chief there, doing a great job, Brownie.
You remember that whole business?
He's no longer a federal employee, you understand.
And he is now being asked to come forward because Democrats are in full howl about who knew what when about Katrina, so forth and so on.
This is another thing they're mining for their hate Bush, anti-Bush, because that's all they've got program.
So he must have really wanted to kill black people in Katrina.
We've heard the witnesses.
We really want the memos.
We want the email that says, go down there and kill black people because I know it's there.
So the letter comes in from Andrew W. Lester: quote: Unless there is a specific direction otherwise from the president, including an assurance the president will provide a legal defense to Mr. Brown if he refuses to testify as to these matters, Mr. Brown will testify if asked about particular communications, quote unquote.
And of course, Mr. Brown's desire is, quote, to see that all the facts are made public, unquote.
In other words, unless you pay this lawyer, Mr. Bush, unless you pay my lawyer, I'm going to blab about everything I can think of to make you look bad.
So I better get some money here.
But it's done in such a nice way.
Oh.
John on a cell phone in Yonkers, New York.
John, welcome to the Russ Show.
Hi, Roger.
It's a distinct pleasure speaking with you.
I've been trying to get through for a long time.
My wife and I were speaking.
I'm on my way to work.
And what about the farmers that are paying not to work?
What about him?
He's in the same thing as a job bank.
The government pays them not to produce any food.
I agree.
And another thing, Roger, I'm a customer freight forwarder.
I'm 65 years old.
I've been going to the docks since I was 16 years old.
Years ago, they used to go gangs, gangs of six gangs of eight.
One gang work while the other gangs play cards.
Stocks of money rolling all over the place.
What do you call that?
What do you call it?
It's the same thing as the job bank guys that were members of the Teamsters were getting paid to play cards while one gang worked.
I saw this.
I saw this on the Sopranos.
John, you know, the guys down at the construction site there, you know, sitting around the shed while the rest of the people are actually constructing the building.
Yes?
Well, it's all the same thing.
It's a big rocket.
It's a racket.
It's a big rocket, and nobody's doing anything.
Absolutely.
What this ought to do is protect the working kind, get rid of all these damn unions, throw them all out at the globe.
Hey, John, thanks for the call.
I appreciate it.
And you know what?
Let's go back to this.
Everyone working for a living ought to be working.
If you want a paycheck, you ought to be producing something for it.
Now, if we want to go the other way, then I want a Marshall Plan for radio.
And I'm going to sit home and go surfing tomorrow.
And I just like, you know, just when you go to the blank air on the air instead of hearing me, it just means that I'm getting my paycheck and I'm surfing because that's the new America.
That's Hillary's America.
That's how crazy that.
I mean, it's crazy.
Pay people not to grow wheat.
And I know both parties are involved in this, and I know there's a whole history on that issue.
But please, I still don't get it.
Pay people not to grow something?
Hello?
Robert in Saginaw, Michigan.
Robert, welcome to the Russ Show.
I agree with that.
Don't, you know, paying people not to grow things.
That's stupid, too.
They ought to let them grow stuff and let them just, you know, sell it to whoever they want.
Anyways, I'm calling on this Jobs Bank thing.
That guy that called in must have been from management from someplace because I work for, I mean, I'm with the UAW.
I've been there for six years.
And this jobs bank started when, see, when management, when they made changes and stuff like that and they had to lay management people off, what they would do is they would pay them for a year to pretty much sit down and do nothing so that way they wouldn't hire out somewhere else.
That way they wouldn't lose their people.
And pretty much the UAW did the same thing.
Same program for management, but it was only for a year.
We had a guy call up and said his friend was on it for 13 years.
No, no, you're only for this for a year, okay, because that's I found a lot of this stuff because I thought a lot of this stuff was crazy, too.
And you don't hear the whole story on a lot of stuff.
This is only for a year that you get paid to do this.
Okay, and they're talking about cutting us down to $10 an hour, but yet I didn't hear anybody talk about how they want to pay $350 million in bonuses to management people after they cut us down to $10 an hour.
If they're hurting so bad for money, why are they taking our money away to give it to management?
Okay, well, I got other UAW guys who are telling me that this thing is for life until you retire.
I don't know about this.
Well, it's 12,000 workers who are supposedly in this job bank thing, not the management types, the workers.
Letter, things was beginning this year saying they had no people on Jobs Bank for Delphi.
Okay, so I can just tell you what's at Delphi.
And as far as I know, it's only for a year.
And personally, it's for life.
It's ridiculous.
I mean, then actually it would be the government.
We've got plenty of people who don't do work, but yet they get money.
And I'm not agreeable on a lot of that.
The GM president took a cut yesterday of 50% in his pay.
Huh?
Huh?
I'm sorry.
The GM, I don't want to shock you, Robert.
The GM president took a, and I think the second guy, too, took a cut of 50% in pay.
Oh, geez.
You know, over at Delphi, our president took a 100% cut.
He said he'd take a dollar, but he still kept this $3 million bonus.
I'd take a 100% cut, keep $3 million.
He gets like, what, $1.5 million a year?
Yeah, but he's running the whole company.
Well, he's running the whole company.
What do you do?
Hey, I work on the line.
What do you want to do?
I build the parts that go in the cars.
What part do you make?
Steering.
The steering wheel.
Yes.
Assemble the whole steering column.
Yeah.
Well, that's important work, man.
Hey, I appreciate the call, Robert.
Let me get to another Robert here in Fort Madison.
Go ahead.
Robert, you're on the air.
Yeah, I'm here.
Go ahead.
Yeah, really, I've never heard much said about this, but if we don't push ahead with the NSA wiretaps and the Patriot Act, and Al-Qaeda manages to get through to one of our cities in a major way, not a couple of buildings, where they get nuked, or germ warfare, or a biological attack, we'll have to kiss our civil rights goodbye because we'll be at a police state overnight.
And I just never hear anybody say anything about that.
It's an interesting point.
In other words, the point I made is similar to that yesterday was, look, you know these Democrats that are objecting to the NSA intercepts, they're the same ones.
If there was another attack on the United States, you know in a heartbeat they'd have a press conference blaming Bush for not protecting the American people.
Well, they would have to shut down the country.
I mean, it would be because they'd be scared of another city getting hit and people moving around carrying a weapon of some sort.
I really just can't see anything but what they used to call Fortress America.
I think in other words, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Yeah.
You're worried about the civil rights.
Well, this is civil rights in a major way.
Civil rights right now, right now.
I appreciate it.
Here's Elizabeth in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Hi, Elizabeth.
Welcome to the Russ Show.
Thank you, Roger.
I have a rebuttal to those in Congress, especially our Senator Reed, who's in opposition to monitoring phone calls.
If through surveillance or telephone monitoring, they discover an attack on Congress is imminent, does Congress want the President to take immediate action to protect them?
Or should he insist that the President wait 72 hours and first get approval from a judge?
I would love it.
I mean, the Capitol Hill blows up.
I don't want to see this happen, but I've got the mental picture.
Capitol Hill blows up, and Bush goes, hey, I got the intercept.
I could have warned you, but we had to go down to FISA and get some kind of piece of paper first.
I mean, come on, I'm just trying to go by your rules.
I think they want the 72 hours so they can be sure the enemy gets advanced warning of what we're going to do.
Hey, I got a question for you in Las Vegas.
Okay.
What is this President Jimmy Carter's son, Jack Carter's, running against John Ensign?
Oh, yeah.
He's a carpetbagger type.
He just moved into Las Vegas so he could do that.
Well, so did everybody else in the last 10 minutes.
Come on, I've been to Las Vegas.
People are there from all over the world.
But, Elizabeth, isn't he from?
Like, well, I don't know.
Is he from Plains, Georgia, or what's the deal?
I'm not sure where he's really from, but I know where he's not going to go.
He's not going to go to the Senate for Nevada.
By the way, you've got to think about Hillary.
Remember, she copied all those FBI files?
Yes, she did.
She became president.
You can imagine what the monitoring would be.
Yikes.
Be personal.
She'd be looking at my tax returns.
Elizabeth, thanks for the call.
I appreciate it.
I'm Roger Hedgecock in for Rush Limbaugh taking your calls at 1-800-282-2882 after this.
You're back on the Rush Limbaugh program here at the EIB Network.
I'm Roger Hedgecock filling in for Rush Tom Sullivan tomorrow, Rush Back on Monday, and Rush Live, of course, not live.
He's taped with Neil Cavuto from yesterday at rushlimbaugh.com.
Okay, now I was thinking about this idea on the job bank issue, where workers, up to 12,000 of them, according to one caller, are paid full pay for not building cars, trucks, and engines, and all that stuff, for sitting at home.
I mean, having to slog out to the mailbox once a week and, you know, a couple times a month, maybe, and pull in the paycheck.
It seems to me, let me offer this free.
I don't even want to be compensated.
I don't want to consult and contract.
I don't want to be lionized in the financial press in any way, shape, or form.
It seems to me that these are the jobs GM and Ford ought to be sending overseas.
I mean, I can imagine, for example, instead of $30 an hour, that an Indian or a Pakistani or somebody would do this work for $3 an hour.
I mean, they'd sit in their yurt in their wigwam, whatever it is, and get $3 an hour.
I mean, GM would be better off if they outsourced the job bank.
What do you think about that?
Here's Eugene in Pennsylvania.
Eugene, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Program.
Hey, how are you doing, Roger?
All right, what's up?
No, Marte, I used to work as an intern for Honda of American Manufacturing in Marysville, Ohio.
They produced all the Camrys and I'm sorry, not all the Camry, all the Accords and the Civics there and some other smaller lines.
The engineers there used to brag that they were at 78% the amount of man hours per unit produced compared to the UAW.
So not only are these American motor companies straddled with these jobs banks and crazy stuff like that, but it proves that it takes 22% less pay and workers to make a car just because the people actually work a little bit harder.
Now, why is that?
I mean, it's the same workers.
They're American workers.
Well, the mentality, the mentality, I believe it's the mentality that's created by the UAW.
They feel that they're owed what they get.
And Honda, they pay them great.
They started on at $18 an hour, and they're up to $30 an hour after five years.
So it's nothing to laugh at.
I mean, they don't get the crazy amount of vacation and stuff, but you work or you're gone.
Work or you're gone?
Kind of un-American starters.
I work and you're gone or you're gone.
Good grief.
I mean, if you're a terrible worker, you're going to get fired.
If you're late, you're going to get fired.
Try firing a UAW worker.
There's no way.
It's impossible.
Yeah, that's totally impossible.
All right, Eugene, thanks.
So there you go.
American workers in a plant run by the Japanese with no UAW, good benefits.
The Japanese, by the way, pay good benefits.
I think we know that.
And pay well in terms of the hourly.
So he's saying within five years, you can go up to 30 bucks an hour.
I mean, these are guys, you know, maybe out of high school, working in those jobs.
This is blue-collar jobs in the traditional American industrial sense where you can make a good living without having that college education.
Building those goods.
Now, let me tell you something.
You know, you go to the Parker ratings and all that.
You'll find out that that Toyota car is more highly rated than the comparable American-built ones in a whole lot of ways.
So they're building a better car, arguably, with fewer labor hours in it and no union contract, and the good workers get promoted and the bad ones get shown the door.
Which plant, the one run by the American company or the one run by the Japanese company, more adheres to traditional American values?
Oops.
Here's Brenda in Saginaw, Michigan.
Hi, Brenda.
Welcome to The Rush Show.
Hi, Mr. Hedgecock.
I'm calling about my own personal experiences with the jobs bank.
I've been employed at two different General Motors facilities in Saginaw.
They're both foundries.
One of them is on the verge of closing, and I transferred from that one to a larger foundry that is downsizing at this point in time.
But in both cases, jobs banks were put into effect in those foundries.
And what happened with the people who went into the jobs bank was that they were put to work in non-traditional roles.
In other words, they weren't performing in their normal capacity.
And they did continue to receive their full paycheck, but they weren't sitting home and collecting it.
What were they doing?
Oh, some of them were put to work assisting in the engineering department.
Other people were put to work reorganizing our storeroom facility there in the plant where we draw our materials to do various jobs.
And other people were put to work doing janitorial work.
It was a variety of jobs, but no one stayed home and collected a check.
Now, that may happen with some people.
I can't speak for all General Motors facilities, but in the two facilities where I've been employed, that has been the practice.
Yeah, Detroit News is reporting that 12,000 folks are doing nothing.
They're not doing non-traditional.
They're not tidying up the rec room or whatever.
They're sitting home.
Detroit News.
I don't know.
I'm Roger Hedgecock in for Rush Short Break.
Back after this.
Roger Hedgecock in for Rush Limbaugh.
It's as far as I want to go imitating their music.
Philip in Memphis, Tennessee, next on the Rush Show.
Hi, Philip.
Glad to see you sitting in.
I'm going to back up a little bit, but this is very important.
The Iranians are fixing to go before the Security Council and the UN.
Syria is fixing to go before the Security Council and the UN for the killings in Lebanon, the assassinations.
Guess who's fixing to be sitting at the head of the table of security at the UN?
Who?
The Danes.
Denmark is up for the chairmanship of the Security Council?
Yes.
Isn't that amazing?
Oh, this is going to get more interesting than I thought.
Yeah, now what's going to happen if they want to show any backbone and exact any punishment, you can hear them screaming already.
It's going to be interesting because is Denmark, the question really is, is Denmark then going to go the way of the appeasement socialist government of Spain, or are they going to get a backbone like Britain and stand up for Western civilization?
Are they going to stand up to the Iranian terror and the fact that those people are about to get a bomb with a missile that can hit Europe?
Oh, this is going to get interesting.
Rush, thanks for letting me fill in.
I appreciate it very much.
I'm Roger Hedgecock.
Tom Sullivan tomorrow.
Rush back on Monday.
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