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April 25, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:25
April 25, 2006, Tuesday, Hour #2
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Thanks, Johnny Donovan, and it's a pleasure to be with you and to be uh working with such good people like uh H.R., Kit Carson, Mike Maimone.
And being here in the uh EIB studios in the and truly the golden microphone.
It is a pleasure and a privilege to be here in the New York City offices of the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, where there is never a final exam, but we are tested every day.
I am a fellow student, teaching assistant, Paul W. Smith, nice to be with you.
Uh and uh nice to be able to have a call made out to a guest you really want to talk to and you haven't really I I must say I haven't tried before, but when you call and say you're calling on behalf of the Rush Limbaugh Show, that most people pay attention, then they come on board.
And that would include our next guest.
Uh he can be seen talking about finance on Fox TV news every week.
Uh he's really known as a for a lot of people they just know he's a funny guy on television and in the and in the movies.
Uh and he had his own television show, spend uh uh spending Ben Stein's money or win win Ben Stein's money.
Uh he's written about finance, however, for Barons, uh the Wall Street Journal, uh New York Times.
The New York Times.
In fact, you know what, Ben, hi, I'm Paul.
Nice meeting you.
How are you, Paul?
I am fine.
It was a New York Times story dated February twenty-sixth that really made me say, I gotta talk to Ben Stein.
Because in that story, Ben Stein, I remind you you talked about your great economics teacher, C. Lowell Harris.
Right.
Who said when you think of corporate shareholders think of widows and orphans.
Now explain to us.
Give us a lesson here.
Well, when most people think of corporations, they think of people driving around in Bentleys or uh sailing around in yachts, and uh that isn't most corporations.
Most corporations are owned predominantly by pension funds, and the pension funds are uh uh there to benefit people who are retired or their widows or their orphans.
And uh this is a far cry from uh JP Morgan or the Got Rock family.
This is a uh s this is the ordinary American working family, and so when you uh say oh the oil companies are ripping us off.
Well, first of all, that's a very much more complicated story than that, but uh but it's mostly when you say any company is ripping us off, it's it's usually uh the stockholders uh who are getting benefits, or maybe people will be able to retire more securely, he'll be able to go on a vacation maybe when they're retired, he'll be able to pay their medical bills when they're retired.
That's what you're talking about when you talk about corporations and corporate profits.
And ExxonMobil, for example.
Well, ExxonMobil is an interesting case.
ExxonMobil is the largest oil company in the world uh that is Domestic oil company.
Remotely in the same s I don't know what that is, by the way.
I'm in a hotel, so I don't know how they're I'm sorry?
Uh ExxonMobil is a very very small company compared to the power players, say from the Iranian oil company or the Saudi Arabian oil company or Mexican oil company.
State owned oil companies.
Right, state-owned oil companies.
It's still an enormous company, don't get me wrong, it's an absolutely enormous company, but tiny on the scale of the world oil business.
It might dispose of between 2% and 3% of the world's oil each day, which is to me a staggering amount, but it's not huge in the context of the market.
This is a company that has uh about maybe uh roughly a hundred thousand plus employees, and of those, the great majority are just uh workers working in the oil fields or people working in offices processing payroll or per people serving meals in the cafeteria.
There are only a very few of them who are highly paid.
There are only a few who are really spectacularly highly paid, and only one at that company who is really just overwhelmingly highly paid.
And even he, who was running the biggest uh privately owned company in America, big biggest privately owned company in North America, made a lot less per day than a TV star or a movie star.
He made a lot less per day than some of the people you see on TV every day.
And he's running a giant oil company that puts oil in everybody's car.
So when the ordinary uh reader reads about the evil oil corporations, there's nobody there.
There ain't no evil oil corporations.
There are uh just corporations of people doing their day's work, and uh there will be one or two people who are very highly paid at those companies, but there are a lot of people who are highly paid all around this country now.
Well and then why do you think the reaction uh is the way it is right now with even the President of the United States joining the what seems to be politicized bandwagon.
Well I think first of all uh there's a wonderful movie called The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence.
And in that movie I think it's James Stewart who says that when the legend this is the West when the legend gets to be bigger than the truth, print the legend.
And so the legend is that the oil companies are the bad guys and the oil companies are all still owned by the Rockefellers and the oil companies are owned by a cabal of fantastically wealthy Texas oil men.
And uh so that somehow there just isn't enough strength out there in the society to fight that uh that preconception.
I mean I I have to say I don't think ExxonMobil or the other big oil companies do a particularly good job in fighting it either.
I I uh and I must say when I uh when I defend them I don't get that much help from them.
So that's uh so that but but the story is the story.
I mean the story is these are big giant companies but big giant companies are made up of lots and lots of little ordinary people and that's what oil companies are too explain a little bit of your background Ben Stein so people don't say well that's just another rich guy defending a bunch of rich guys I mean I I would call myself definitely upper middle class but far from rich I mean I I probably make in a year what Rush makes in a week but anyway the uh the uh even even that's not bad.
But the uh the the uh the uh the point is that you did spend a lot of time I'm uh a uh uh uh I'm an economist, I'm a lawyer, I am a screenwriter, I'm a novelist, I'm a newspaper columnist, a university teacher, a um just have done lots and lots and lots of things.
And in all of them what I find is the common denominator is the human being.
The common denominator is that the ordinary citizen is behind extraordinary events and extraordinary entities and at the oil companies it's the same thing.
I mean look people say oh the oil companies they're ripping us off the oil companies are thieves.
The oil Exxon Mobil had a lot of employees in a a refinery called Chalmet, I don't know if I'm even pronouncing it right in uh Louisiana, who went around and rescued people and animals who were uh stranded and marooned and in mortal danger from Hurricane Katrina.
Are we mad at them?
Exxon Mobil has a lot of people who risk their lives digging for oil in scary jungles.
Are we mad at them?
Or Exxon Mobile has a lot of people who climb around in dangerous catwalks at refineries where if they fell they could lose their lives.
Are we mad at them?
I mean who are we mad at here?
The people who are driving up the price are oil traders.
They are people trading on the trading desks of the big banks, the big investment banks, big stock brokerages, and even they are just trying to make a living.
They're trying to outgast the next guy and it's true they do make a fantastic incredible living but it is thanks to them that we haven't had any more problems of running out of oil like we did in the early 70s during the Arab oil embargo.
I mean, we have a bad situation now in terms of high oil prices, but at least we've got oil and gas and energy, and it's available even if at a very high price.
Well, Ben Stein, also it's important to note, because a lot of people think that these prices are being set by a bunch of guys in Texas sitting around a boardroom table, when that's not the case.
It's the commodity markets around the world.
Right, they're set by a bunch of young traders yelling and screaming into telephones and also punching buttons on computers.
They're not set at all by the oil barons.
There are no oil barons left anymore.
oil barons getting Lee Raymond getting four hundred million dollars for his retirement he could be thought of now as an oil baron so to speak he I I I okay I happen to think that's uh that was a a slap in the face of the oil uh and and energy consuming customer frankly yeah uh and but it worked out to something like a hundred and forty four thousand dollars a day that's what the New York Times calculated it how they calculated it and God bless them.
But and I'm not gonna quarrel with them I write a call for them I'm not gonna start a fight with them.
But uh the uh but look how much do how much do you think a shack gets paid per game?
How much do you think Kobe gets paid per game?
It's not that much less and and I d or it might not be any less.
And what what what service do do those guys do compared with helping to make sure that gasoline is available and heating oil is available for your home.
I mean I it's hard for me to think uh even though I am a Lakers fan and I love Shaq, it's hard for me to think that he does a service comparable with leading Exxon Mobile.
Yeah, and I think George Clooney for the days he's working on a movie probably gets paid more, and he performs as far as I can tell absolutely no service.
Ben Stein with us, thank uh goodness for your great economics teacher, C. Lowell Harris.
Yes, he was a genius, was and is still very much alive at ninety one.
Excellent.
And uh and teaching us that oil is a world commodity like tin or copper or rubber or coffee, the prices set by traders anticipating supply and demand prices go up or down, it's not a conspiracy, it's uh panic or confidence in the market, as you read.
Right, fear and greed as always.
And uh and and that's just the way it is.
Although uh it does upset a lot of people and very listen, I go in I just bought a new car and when I go in to fill up my car, it drives me absolutely insane.
I mean I can't believe how much it costs.
But on the other hand, I am old enough to remember when you couldn't get gasoline at any price during the IRM oil embargo, and that was far worse.
We uh also are reminded, and this uh from uh Scott Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation, that uh that what we really need is a windfall profit tax on government because government makes far more money per gallon than the oil companies do.
Well, I mean, who would if we pay if we had taxed them, the money would just go back to the government.
So I don't know how much sense that makes.
But okay.
Well, but think of it.
I if we if we're complaining to the politicians and the politicians are complaining to the president about something they really can't do anything about, because the people in London or Nigeria or any other places around the world where prices are set don't care what our politicians say.
However, our politicians can do something about taxes, and they don't.
I know, but our ta well we work thirty days to fill our tank, a hundred and sixteen days to pay our taxes.
That's true.
But on the other hand, uh I I have to disagree with you a little bit here, 'cause some a lot of those taxes go to pay our military forces and to pay their pensions and to pay for their veterans administration health care and you know I would never be against that.
I'm very, very, very happy to pay my check to the IRS knowing that some of it goes to the men and women who wear the uniform.
I'm very, very happy to pay that.
As long as you'd be willing, Ben Stein to pay some of ours as well along the way.
I mean, after all, you are uh an actor or writer.
Right, but I'm not the host but I'm not Rush Limbaugh.
No, you're not.
And nor am I. But I am Paul W. Smith Inforush, and back with Ben in a moment.
Paul W. Smith InfoRush Limbaugh.
Welcome in to the Rush Limbaugh Show, and we're spending some time with Ben Stein.
And uh and before he goes, uh today we are going to talk about his brand new book, How Successful People Win Using Bunkhouse Logic to get what you want in life.
That comes out uh first of May.
You can put in your orders now on Amazon.com and elsewhere we'll talk about that.
Uh maybe a word or two on immigration and also uh the CIA's Mary McCarthy, because I just like to hear Ben Stein's opinions on these things.
The world price of crude oil, the most important factor in the price of gasoline, and we're talking about that and more, and Kurt is calling in just as you can at 1800-282-2882, and also always go to Rush Limbaugh.com for more information, podcasting, etc.
Kurt, uh welcome into the program.
Say hi to Ben Stein.
Thank you.
Hey Ben.
Hi, how are you?
Fine, thanks.
I just really appreciate the discussion that you guys are having today.
And uh I had an example.
Well, first of all, I want to thank you for taking my call.
I think it's a real honor to be uh heard on this program.
Um but an example that I think of with regards to these oil prices.
Uh I think about a farmer.
He puts his crop in the field, say he plants corn, he plants a hundred acres of corn.
That crop's in the ground for four months, and he's expecting a certain profit at the end of that time.
Maybe he's gonna sell it for two fifty a bushel, three dollars a bushel, something like that.
During those four months that the crop is ripening, uh uh there's a new discovery related to corn, and all of a sudden the price uh for corn skyrockets because people are willing to pay a lot more for it.
Uh that farmer is going to make a huge profit now because maybe now it's selling for twenty dollars a bushel.
Very good point.
Is the farmer evil now because he's making that profit.
His costs are fixed in the past.
Exactly.
That's a very good point.
That's a very good point.
He's totally out of it's uh that whether or not there's a profit is out of his control.
He just plants the crop uh expecting that he's gonna be able to sell it for a certain price later on.
He's not in control of new discoveries that happen along the way, the change in demand, that sort of thing.
Uh but we wouldn't call the farmer evil for profiting profiting in October, November when he sells his crop.
Absolutely.
Although there ha I can remember times when weed has gone up a lot when people have called farmers evil, but uh that yeah, it's sort of the luck of the draw.
If tomorrow uh there's uh something that happens if, say uh Nigeria s completely suppresses the rebels and oil from my Nigeria becomes a secure commodity again, the price will fall dramatically.
If uh there's a huge new find in Saudi Arabia, the price will fall dramatically, and then I'll tell you what, nobody's gonna be sending uh welfare checks to Exxon Mobil.
Ben, I gotta ask you a quick question.
I know you're being picked up, you're giving a speech today.
How much uh longer can we have you?
I'll say ten minutes.
Ten minutes.
All right, we got to take care of a lot of business here then.
I uh I apologize to the callers.
We will get to these callers who are on hold right now.
But a couple of other quick things, because I do want to get your thoughts.
You wrote a uh uh uh scathing piece uh almost a year ago in the American Spectator on uh Mark Felt, who's out in the news again today.
Oh, I didn't see that.
Yeah, he's out there and uh and I'm not sure what they're doing.
I've just I only just glanced at the papers because I'm working on my speech.
What what is it?
I don't even know today.
I I don't know why he's uh out there.
I don't have the sound up on the monitors, but I I thought maybe he died, but he did not.
Uh the former FBI agent, Mark Felt, who was deep throat, he's he's out and about.
I think he's go I it's probably because I'm gonna guess Larry King has the first ever uh broadcast interview with him or something like that.
But you wrote uh in strong terms about him almost a year ago, June first, two thousand five, if you want to look it up Spectator.org, the American Spectator for our listeners.
So I thought it would be good to get at least your reaction to the CIA case with Mary McCarthy.
Well, I think it's very serious when people leak.
Uh if they're at the CIA, they're not supposed to leak, and the uh leaks that this woman made were devastating.
I mean, it's absolutely absolutely devastating.
Really, really, really, really devastating.
And and uh she should uh I I think she should be severely s sanctioned for this.
I mean, I'm I could be totally wrong about this.
Maybe I'm not understanding the culture of the CIA, but I'm afraid I'm understanding the culture of the CIA all too well, which is that their real job is to ingratiate themselves with the Washington press corps and to try to be among the beautiful people at Washington parties, and uh only secondarily is their job to protect uh Americans from terrorists.
I I have the feeling that's been the agenda at the CIA for a darned long time, uh only substitute the Soviet Union for the terrorists.
And uh the people who leak and who uh subvert the uh policies of the US government uh should be severely sanctioned.
What I said about Mark Felt years ago a year ago, or ten months or eleven months ago was here's a guy who helped get Nixon out of office.
Okay.
More power to him, I'm sure all his friends think.
Oh, I don't know if he has any friends, but whatever friends he has think.
But by getting Nixon out of office, it meant that we had a greatly weakened presidency, could not defend Southeast Asia, could not defend Cambodia, could not defend South Vietnam.
It meant the Paul Pot regime took over in uh Cambodia, created the worst genocide on a percentage basis there has ever been known to man in the world, c killed something like one third of all the people of Cambodia in the most brutal, horrifying fashion requiring children to beat their parents to death with sticks.
This is unspeakable, unimaginable behavior, and it wouldn't have happened if Nixon had remained in office.
So I think to myself, well, this is Mr. Felt.
I hope you're very proud of what you did getting Nixon out of office and getting those two and a half million Cambodians killed.
I I mean I I think uh I wonder if you can sleep at night.
One quick note, uh less than a minute here, and then when we come back, we'll talk about the new book with Ben Stein.
You wrote in uh the March issue of the American Spectator.
I wonder talking about yourself and a friend of yours, I wonder how many of us Jews take time each day to thank God for our daily lives in America.
It is so unbelievably fabulous to be here, and we owe so much to the men who died to keep us from.
Oh my God, I cannot even start to tell you.
You know, yesterday uh day before no, yes, the day before yesterday I was out on the golf course in Rancho Mirage.
I'm the world's worst golfer, but I was out on the golf course in my pathetic way.
And I thought you were I can so relate, Ben.
I can so relate.
Uh yeah, I no, I'm sure you're a good golfer.
I I'm they I'm there, and I'm out out in the greenery.
Sun is shining.
I'm not in a death camp.
I'm not being rounded up.
I'm not having my head sawed off by an Arab terrorist.
I'm not being uh starved to death in a work camp in Poland or Silesia.
I am ahead of the game by so much, all thanks to the men and women who wear the uniform who gave their lives to win World War II, to give their li gave their lives to win the Cold War who are fighting right now against the terrorists.
How blessed.
How blessed we are.
We'll let you finish your thoughts.
Coming back.
And Ben Stein, who has graciously stayed with us uh even though he's on his way to a speech shortly.
We did want to uh have a chance to uh talk about so many things I'd like to talk with you about, Ben, but uh wanted to talk a bit about.
Your new book, which is coming out uh officially released on May first.
Ben Stein's How Successful People Win Using Bunkhouse Logic to Get What You Want in Life.
Tell us a bit about it, will you, Ben?
Well, I first learned about it from a very smart fellow at UC Santa Cruz where I taught long ago liberal bastion.
He said that the logic that built this country was the logic of the cowboy, which is if something bad happens to you, don't whine about it, don't complain about it to your psychiatrist, go out and do something about it.
And then I learned about it even better from a great novelist named John Didian, who's a lifelong friend, who said, if you you can't win if you're not at the table, and that has sort of been my motto ever since.
If you want to try to do something in your life, go to the table.
You cannot win.
You cannot get you want what you want just by dreaming about it and fantasying about it.
You have to go out there and go for it, and you have to risk failure.
And it does not hurt to try and fail.
What hurts is to fail to try.
Go out there, imagine the cowboy, he's leading his herd along, he comes to a dry water hole.
He doesn't write a letter to his mother complaining and blaming her for the fact that she wasn't a good mother, and that's why he couldn't get the cow the herd to the to the next watering hole.
He just goes out and finds the next watering hole.
And this is what makes America great.
Going out and doing and be instead of complaining.
And this is what I observe in life is the people who are successful are the ones who are out there doing and succeeding instead of staying around and complain just sticking around and complaining and whining and imagining that somehow whining is going to make it better.
It never does.
Doing is what this world is all about, not whining.
A serious self-help book.
And to refuse to let other people's hang ups get in your way and to move deliberately toward clearly thought out goals, and you will get where you want to go.
You will get where you want to go.
Life is a freeway, and you will get there, but you have to know what your goal is.
Life is a freeway, but you have to know what exit you want to get off at.
All right, Ben.
What else are you working on?
I am working on a speech, uh something your readers, your listeners will be very interested in about the older worker, because we have a labor shortage in this country.
You would never know it to hear the Democrats who are always talking about how bad the economy is.
But we have a severe labor shortage in this country in many parts of the country and in many areas, and the older worker is going to be asked to stay on the job longer, and this is going to help with the retirement crisis.
And the older worker is going to teach the younger worker about good attitudes of work.
The younger worker feels entitled, feels it's an imposition to work.
The older worker has been through some harder times, knows that's a gift and a pleasure to be able to work.
It organizes your days, it gives you self-esteem, makes you feel as if you're worth something.
It makes you feel as if you're a good guy to be out there exchanging your labor and your sweat and your brain power for a roof over your family's head.
And uh this is uh this is something that is A, gonna help the economy with this labor shortage, and B, it's gonna educate a whole new generation of workers, because when an older worker and a younger worker are working side by side, the younger worker learns better work habits from that older worker.
Yeah, well put.
Where are we gonna see this?
Read it, hear about it.
Uh I'll probably write about it in the Spectator, but I'll probably write about it also in the New York Times.
I write a column every other Sunday in the New York Times.
I'm the only Republican in the economics area in the New York Times.
I hope they don't find out about it.
I think I can feel sure that nobody at the times is listening to this show.
Oh no, no, they're listening to find out what they should be covering tomorrow or what they should bash Today.
No, they're not.
Believe me, they've got plenty of ways of figuring out that themselves.
Ben, it was really a pleasure.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
Have a good day.
You do the same.
Ben Stein and uh his latest book is How Successful People Win Using Bunkhouse Logic to Get What You Want in Life.
And uh and I just find him uh fascinating.
I think he's uh an interesting guy, so he's written uh a number of other books.
You can uh yes, you can still retire comfortably.
Uh yes, you can become a successful income investor reaching for yield in today's market by Benjamin Stein.
Uh there's a whole bunch of stuff out there.
Uh how to ruin your financial life.
That's uh that's one probably that we should all take a look at as well.
All right, let's get back to you uh on the telephone at 1 800 282 2882.
Don't let me forget this uh bill of responsibilities.
That's your responsibility here, H.R. uh and Mike.
Because we're gonna dash right through this thing, and for once I have something I can read from the internet that I can tell people where to get it, instead of the thousands of people who emailed me at my uh my WJR uh email, and I and I couldn't get it to them because I I couldn't uh uh traffic in you know somebody else's uh work.
So but this one is on an internet uh site uh for let's see, the uh Freedoms Foundation.
This goes back to nineteen eighty-five from the Freedoms Foundation, which is the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge, FFVF.org.
But I'll I'll I'll I'll read that in just a moment.
I'm gonna get to you on the telephone because you've been waiting.
And we go to my home state of Michigan, Saginaw, Michigan, and William, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Well, thank you, Mr. Smith.
Paul.
Glad to be here.
Glad to have you here, William.
Took a while to get in.
All right.
Um my concern listening to the the conversation with the two individuals, uh the uh four hundred million dollar retiree and uh and uh Mr. Stein.
Uh a lot of times, you know, we talk about the complaints and and uh the American public and we get upset thinking we're ripped off, and I kind of feel I'm kind of an in the uh middle class myself.
I'm a retired of Delphi, worked for GM for thirty-nine years and retired from Delphi after 42.
Uh my concern is is the erosion of the middle class.
Uh I can't agree with Mr. Stein more.
I I don't think Shaq's worth his money, and and I don't think George Clooney's worth his money.
Uh it's just hard for me in the middle class uh seeing kind of the the inflation ebb away at at retirement and things that uh I spend money on.
I've been a sports fan all my life, yet I I have problem with the two twenty hitter making millions of dollars.
And and I have the same problem with the corporate.
I I I have you don't even have to you believe me, you don't have to go on.
Uh I have trouble with the fact that a that uh that an athlete or an entertainer makes more than an entire school system in certain towns.
I mean, that's just that's unacceptable.
But that's that is the way it is.
But you know, Paul Harvey said something uh this morning uh on my morning show today on WJR there in Detroit, which I hope you listen to there from uh Saginaw.
Um that Paul Harvey said if this is correct, and I and I don't have the exact quote in front of me, that twenty-six years ago, the CEO, the boss, the head of the company, made ten dollars for every one dollar that one of his employees or one of the workers on the line or whatever made.
Right.
Today, it's four hundred thirty dollars to every one dollar.
And and you can come up with a lot of reasons why that's the way it is, and that's a free market, and that's the way business is, but we are having uh a bigger divide between the haves and the have nots and a a bigger stretch where it seems like the middle class is well, feeling like you just said your feeling, William.
Right.
We're the the separation between the upper class or the upper middle and the middle, maybe even the upper middle is dropping into the middle.
But that separation I think is what is really frustrating.
We we will uh talk about it in different ways, we will complain about it in different ways, but I think that's really frustrating.
We see it.
It's important for people to hear you, William, and know that you worked very hard for many, many years.
You're not uh uh Nairwell or somebody trying to sneak by or anything else.
You worked hard, you played by the rules, and it's not working out exactly the way you were told it would work out.
And shame on the people who made promises to you that they probably shouldn't have made in the first place and now can't live up to them.
Right.
And I don't know, uh I think the other frustration is that we don't know how to change it.
But yeah.
We can vote, we can do different things, we can We can take action in our local communities.
But we really don't know how to change that separation.
And I think another reason I'm concerned is I'm not sure it's good for the country in the long term.
Well, it w I guess uh we will see.
Time will tell.
John in uh Crofton, Maryland, uh, it's your turn on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Hello, John.
Yeah, good afternoon.
I uh uh I heard the president was uh was on at 10 a.m. uh today talking about this gasoline uh the high price of the gasoline and uh I guess he probably offered uh some suggestions on where to go from here, and I imagine there are going to be uh congressional hearings and uh he's gonna have the energy department and justice department involved.
Of course the IRS should be involved auditing every one of these uh gas companies to see what uh what they're really making and uh and to take criminal action where it's it's necessary.
Now I'm a conservative, I'm a Republican, I usually don't talk this way.
Uh I believe in the free market, but I think the consumers are being left hold holding the bag.
The economy is supposed to be a golden goose, but I think the price of gasoline and the need to commute to get to your jobs is gonna kill the economy eventually.
And uh I think the first thing the president should do is uh talk to the nation uh nationally televised uh address at a time when most people can uh hear him, not at ten a.m. in the morning, but around eight or nine p.m. on all the networks, and say the first thing he's gonna do is declare an emergency and drop the federal tax on every gallon of gas.
He's gonna have a meeting with all fifty governors and uh force them or or encourage them to do the same thing with the state tax.
That ought to take off about fifty cents per gallon, uh say on a three dollar uh per gallon uh price for gas.
Uh if you look at what uh the uh oil companies say they're they've made recently, it's uh under ten percent.
So he's and he's talked about waiving some EPA regulations to relieve fuel shortages.
Uh he's talked about too many localized uh fuels, uh the the boutique fuels.
Uh he thinks they need to expand refining capacity.
He did do all that, but you're right, it was uh it was in the morning and uh unavailable to a lot of people.
Luckily for Rush Limbaugh show listeners, we've covered much of what the President said.
We did that for you because we don't actually have an actual job, so we were able to be sitting in front of the television set when the president was speaking.
Do not forget, coming up at the top of the hour, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney on universal health care.
They say it's working in Massachusetts.
Will we copy it and will it work for the country?
That and more coming up for Rush Limbaugh, I'm Paul W. Smith.
1-800-282-2882-1800-282-2882 and uh Rush Limbaugh.com.
This is uh Paul W. Smith Infor Russian taking your calls.
Uh Albert is in Lowell, Massachusetts, and it's your turn to be heard.
Hello, Albert.
Uh hello, Paul.
Great show.
Thanks.
I totally agree with your your guests that you've had on today.
Uh my comment is on refineries.
Uh you're always hearing about why don't the uh oil companies build new refineries.
Um I have the answer here if you'd like me to read the last six lines of the annual report to you.
All right.
Okay, right here.
It says, uh in the downstream, we continue to efficiently expand our existing facilities at a fraction of the cost of building new refineries.
Over the last ten years, XR Mobiles refining capacity has increased an average of fifty thousand barrels per day per year.
This is the equivalent to building a new grassroots refinery every three years.
Wow.
Hey, uh does this mean uh you've got their uh uh their paperwork.
Are you uh a stockholder?
I'm a longtime stockholder.
So are you uh multi, multimillionaire?
Uh absolutely not.
I worked uh thirty years uh for one company.
I've been retired now for a few years.
I'm uh almost seventy years old, sixty-seven years old, worked hard all my life, and I've held Exxon Mobil since nineteen eighty seven.
And you've done pretty well with it.
I've done very well.
All right, well, good for you.
Uh because there are a lot of people who hold that stock and uh lots of us who don't even know it.
I I'm sure I do, because I have the mutual funds.
But I have no idea what individual stocks my mutual fund manager makes when I buy one of these name brand mutual funds.
I'll bet you a dollar though that Exxon Mobile is in there.
Uh as we heard earlier uh from Ben Stein of all the different retirement plans and other different uh uh stock funds that that are benefiting from all of this gain that ExxonMobil has had.
We don't like it when we're at the gas pump, however.
Uh appreciate your uh your call on that, Albert.
Dave is in Eastern Pennsylvania and checking in.
Hello, Dave.
Good morning.
How you are good afternoon in this case.
Or whatever it might be.
Yeah, I'm I'm doing fine.
I hope you are.
Uh I got a little point to make about the taxes.
Uh we We've talked about the increasing uh cost per gallon of gasoline and the and the percentage increase and the revenue that the states have been getting, especially the states, the federal government's a flat tax on gas.
But uh the point I like to make is that the cost that it's gonna cause that the state is gonna incur in the cost of black top and asphalt products that it puts down the roads every year.
Every time crude oil goes up, that stuff goes up exponentially, and it fluctuates very, very slowly.
So when it goes up, it stays up usually.
So this summer's paving season that we're gonna be getting into when you see all the highway construction and the orange cones.
Right.
It's gonna cost the states a whole lot more money.
And it's gonna trickle right down to the local uh townships.
In my case, in the state of Pennsylvania, we have townships.
And the townships get liquid fuel money from the state, which is a small percentage of what the state collects in his taxes.
Now, most of these townships service maybe two, three thousand people, and they have to maintain their local roads.
This is gonna be a huge pinch on their budget.
You know, I remember back in uh ninety-three, uh a ton of blacktop was forty-three dollars a ton.
Now it's up over eighty, ninety dollars a ton in the span of uh less than thirteen years, it doubled in price.
And that was without the huge increase in the in the crude oil costs.
Interesting.
You know, you you put an interesting point uh on that, Dave, in that in my home state of Michigan, we're looking forward to a bunch of uh uh increased jobs available to fix the roads.
As much as we hate the orange cones and all of that, first of all, our roads are in terrible shape for being the home of the automobile, Motown, the motor city, um uh and uh so we're gonna get the roads fixed, but we're gonna put a lot of people to work.
And so we look forward to that, but uh you're right, figuring in the cost of asphalt if these fuel prices stay high, and it appears they'll actually go higher this summer.
Then that's uh that's an angle we hadn't even thought about, Dave.
Yeah, that's gonna it's gonna cost us it's gonna be a large percentage of a budget for for some of these smaller municipalities we have here in Pennsylvania, and the states alone.
I mean, if you look at the interstate highway system, and you think about the amount of tonnage of blacktop that goes down on those roads every summer, the maintenance or even for new construction, it's huge.
It's it's gonna be huge.
The hard depots of the world probably will not be paving their parking lot this summer.
No, maybe not.
Uh Dave, I appreciate that.
Thanks, uh thanks very much.
Uh just a reminder again, Mitt Romney coming up after the uh top of the hour.
Governor Mitt Romney uh talking about what he has done in his state, uh, and uh there are a lot of people embracing it and keeping an eye on it uh with universal health care, Heritage Foundation, conservative, working side by side with uh Ted Kennedy, Senator Ted Kennedy, not conservative, and Mitt Romney's brought them all together.
Now there are some people don't like it.
The uh Wall Street Journal has not been a fan of this plan.
Even as uh I guess as yesterday uh they had uh an editorial.
Mitt's market misfire, what Romney could have done better for the uninsured than uh April twelfth, they wrote Romney care, the fine print doesn't match the universal hype.
We'll give the uh governor an opportunity in his own words to tell us what it is uh he has done and what he hopes to achieve, and and obviously nobody knows for sure if it's gonna work, but if it does, it could very well be the template for uh other states and for these United States, and we all agree there is an issue here in health care and health care costs that must be dealt with.
It is affecting all of our companies, all of our employers, and it is not something they can necessarily do anything about.
So we'll uh we'll get into that and more as we continue here on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
I'm Paul W. Smith.
Big supporter of Northwest Airlines, because in Detroit at the uh Ed McNamara Terminal, uh Northwest is a big hub there, and uh by the way, it's a beautiful airport now.
It used to be a bad airport experience in Detroit, one of the worst, now it's one of the best with that Ed McNamara terminal at Metro.
Listen to this.
You when you fill up your vehicle, think of Northwest Airlines.
They got 747 400s.
Filling one up is like filling up two thousand SUVs.
Two years ago it cost them forty-eight thousand dollars to fill it to fly from U.S. to Asia, one of their flights.
Today, and this is like last week, a hundred three thousand four hundred dollars to fuel the plane.
Now you can buy a ticket from Detroit to Tokyo, then Tokyo back to Detroit.
Round pr round uh trip uh price six hundred and twenty-four dollars and thirty-one cents.
Takeaway government taxes and fees, Northwest is left with five hundred and fifty-four dollars round trip.
Five hundred and fifty-four dollars round trip is two hundred twenty-seven dollars one way.
You pay two twenty-seven for your seat.
You divide it, you do the math.
Northwest is paying $253.43 just for fuel for that one seat.
Cost you $227 for the seat?
Cost them $253 just for the fuel.
And you wonder why they're not making any money?
And why they have so much trouble?
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