Rush Limbaugh Program - April 25, 2006, Tuesday, Hour #2

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April 25, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program

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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 working with such good people like H.R., Kit Carson, Mike Maymone, and being here in the EIB studios 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.
	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 and they come on board And that would include our next guest.
	He can be seen talking about finance on Fox TV News every week.
	He's really known as a, for a lot of people, they just know he's a funny guy on television and in the movies.
	And he had his own television show, Spending Ben Stein's Money or Win Ben Stein's Money.
	He's written about finance, however, for Barron's, The Wall Street Journal.
	The 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 26th that really made me say, I got to talk to Ben Stein.
	Because in that story, Ben Stein, I remind you, you talked about your great economics teacher, C. Lowell Harris, 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 sailing around in yachts.
	And that isn't most corporations.
	Most corporations are owned predominantly by pension funds.
	And the pension funds are there to benefit people who are retired or their widows or their orphans.
	And this is a far cry from J.P. Morgan or the Gottrocks family.
	This is the ordinary American working family.
	And so when you say, oh, the oil companies are ripping us off, well, first of all, that's a very much more complicated story than that.
	But it's mostly when you say any company is ripping us off, it's usually the stockholders who are getting benefits.
	I mean, people who will be able to retire more securely.
	They'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 that is remotely in the same I don't know what that is, by the way.
	I'm in a hotel, so I don't know how they're ExxonMobil is a very small company compared to the power players, say, from the Iranian oil company or the Saudi Arabian oil company or Mexican oil companies.
	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 about maybe roughly 100,000-plus employees.
	And of those, the great majority are just workers working in the oil fields or people working in offices processing payroll or 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 privately owned company in America, 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 reader reads about the evil oil corporations, there's nobody there.
	There ain't no evil oil corporations.
	There are just corporations of people doing their day's work.
	And 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, then why do you think the reaction is the way it is right now, with even the President of the United States joining what seems to be politicized bandwagon?
	Well, I think, first of all, 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 oilmen.
	And so that somehow there just isn't enough strength out there in the society to fight that preconception.
	I mean, I have to say, I don't think ExxonMobil or the other big oil companies do a particularly good job in fighting it either.
	And I must say, when I defend them, I don't get that much help from them.
	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.
	All right, explain a little bit of your background, Ben Stein, so people don't say, well, that's just another rich guy defending the majority.
	That's a rich guy.
	I mean, I would call myself definitely upper middle class, but far from rich.
	I mean, I probably make in a year what Rush makes in a week.
	But anyway, even that's not bad.
	Well, the point is that you did spend a lot of time in the world.
	I'm an economist.
	I'm an economist.
	I'm a lawyer.
	I am a screenwriter.
	I'm a novelist.
	I'm a newspaper columnist, a university teacher, 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, the oil companies, they're ripping us off.
	The oil companies are thieves.
	ExxonMobil had a lot of employees in a refinery called Chalnet.
	I don't know if I'm even pronouncing it right in Louisiana who went around and rescued people and animals who were stranded and marooned and in mortal danger from Hurricane Katrina.
	Are we mad at them?
	ExxonMobil has a lot of people who risk their lives digging for oil in scary jungles.
	Are we mad at them?
	ExxonMobil 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 outguest 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, not at all, by the oil barons.
	There are no oil barons left anymore.
	The oil barons.
	Lee Raymond getting $400 million for his retirement.
	He could be thought of now as an oil baron, so to speak.
	Okay, I happen to think that was a slap in the face of the oil and energy-consuming customer, frankly.
	But it worked out to something like $144,000 a day.
	That's what the New York Times calculated it, or how they calculated it, and God bless them.
	And I'm not going to quarrel with them.
	I write a call for them.
	I'm not going to start a fight with them.
	But look, how much do you think a Shaq gets paid per game?
	How much do you think Kobe gets paid per game?
	It's not that much less, it might not be any less.
	And what service do those guys do compared with helping to make sure that gasoline is available and heating oil is available for your home?
	I mean, it's hard for me to think, 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 ExxonMobil.
	And he gets paid, I think, as much or close to as much.
	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 goodness for your great economics teacher, C. Lowell Harris.
	Yes, he was a genius, was and is still very much alive at 91.
	Excellent.
	And teaching us that oil is a world commodity like tin or copper or rubber or coffee.
	The price is set by traders anticipating supply and demand.
	Prices go up or down.
	It's not a conspiracy.
	It's panic or confidence in the market, as you say.
	Right, fear and greed, as always.
	And that's just the way it is.
	Although it does upset a lot of people.
	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 Arab oil embargo, and that was far worse.
	We also are reminded, and this is from Scott Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation, 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 paid, 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.
	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 tax, well.
	We work 30 days to fill our tank, 116 days to pay our taxes.
	That's true.
	But on the other hand, I have to disagree with you a little bit here because 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 an actor, a 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 in for Rush and back with Ben in a moment.
	Paul W. Smith in for Rush Limbaugh.
	Welcome into the Rush Limbaugh Show, and we're spending some time with Ben Stein.
	And before he goes 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 1st of May.
	You can put in your orders now on Amazon.com and elsewhere.
	We'll talk about that.
	Maybe a word or two on immigration and also the CIA's Mary McCarthy, because I'd 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 1-800-282-2882.
	And also always go to rushlimbaugh.com for more information, podcasting, etc.
	Kurt, 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 I had an example.
	First of all, I want to thank you for taking my call.
	I think it's a real honor to be heard on this program.
	But an example that I think of with regards to these oil prices, I think about a farmer.
	He puts his crop in the field.
	Say he plants corn.
	He plants 100 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 going to sell it for $250 a bushel, $3 a bushel, something like that.
	During those four months, the crop is ripening, there's a new discovery related to corn, and all of a sudden the price for corn skyrockets because people are willing to pay a lot more for it.
	That farmer is going to make a huge profit now because maybe now it's selling for $20 a bushel.
	Very good point.
	Is the farmer evil now because he's making that profit?
	That's exactly correct.
	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 ⁇ whether or not there's a profit is out of his control.
	He just plants the crop expecting that he's going to 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.
	But we wouldn't call the farmer evil for profiting in October, November when he sells his crop.
	Absolutely.
	Although I can remember times when weed has gone up a lot when people have called farmers evil.
	But, yeah, it's sort of the luck of the draw.
	If tomorrow there's something that happens, if, say, Nigeria completely suppresses the rebels and oil from Nigeria becomes a secure commodity again, the price will fall dramatically.
	If there's a huge new find in Saudi Arabia, the price will fall dramatically.
	And then I'll tell you what, nobody's going to be sending welfare checks to ExxonMobil.
	Ben, I've got to ask you a quick question.
	I know you're being picked up.
	You're giving a speech today.
	How much longer can we have you?
	I'll say 10 minutes.
	10 minutes.
	All right, we've got to take care of a lot of business here then.
	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 scathing piece almost a year ago in the American Spectator on Mark Felt, who's out in the news again today.
	Oh, I didn't see that.
	Yeah, he's out there, and I'm not sure what they're doing.
	I only just glanced at the papers because I'm working on my speech.
	What is it?
	I don't even know.
	I don't know why he's out there.
	I don't have the sound up on the monitors, but I thought maybe he died, but he did not.
	The former FBI agent, Mark Felt, who was deep throat.
	He's out and about.
	It's probably because I'm going to guess Larry King has the first ever broadcast interview with him or something like that.
	But you wrote in strong terms about him almost a year ago, June 1st, 2005.
	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.
	If they're at the CIA, they're not supposed to leak.
	And the leaks that this woman made were devastating.
	I mean, it's absolutely, absolutely devastating.
	Really, devastating.
	And I think she should be severely sanctioned for this.
	I mean, 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 only secondarily is their job to protect Americans from terrorists.
	I have the feeling that's been the agenda at the CIA for a darned long time, only substitute the Soviet Union for the terrorists.
	And people who leak and who subvert the policies of the U.S. government should be severely sanctioned.
	What I said about Mark Felt a year ago, or 10 months or 11 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.
	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 who could not defend Southeast Asia, could not defend Cambodia, could not defend South Vietnam.
	It meant the Paul Pot regime took over in Cambodia, created the worst genocide on a percentage basis there has ever been known to man in the world, 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 mean, I think I wonder if you can sleep at night.
	One quick note, less than a minute here, and then when we come back, we'll talk about the new book with Ben Stein.
	You wrote in the March issue of the American Spectator.
	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, 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 going to be able to do that.
	I can so relate, Ben.
	I can so relate.
	I'm sure you're a good golfer.
	I'm there, and I'm 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 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 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 thought.
	On my knees.
	On my knees.
	Coming back.
	And Ben Stein, who has graciously stayed with us, even though he's on his way to a speech shortly, we did want to have a chance to talk about so many things I'd like to talk with you about, Ben, but I wanted to talk a bit about your new book, which is coming out officially released on May 1st, 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 Joan Didion, who's a lifelong friend, who said, 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 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 herd 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 instead of complaining.
	And 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 complaining, 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.
	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, something 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 it's a gift and a pleasure to be able to work.
	It organizes your days.
	It gives you self-esteem.
	It 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 this is something that is, A, going to help the economy with this labor shortage.
	And B, it's going to 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 going to see this?
	Read it, hear about it?
	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.
	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 his latest book is How Successful People Win Using Bunkhouse Logic to Get What You Want in Life.
	And I just find him fascinating.
	I think he's an interesting guy.
	So he's written a number of other books.
	Yes, you can still retire comfortably.
	Yes, you can become a successful income investor, reaching for yield in today's market by Benjamin Stein.
	There's a whole bunch of stuff out there.
	How to ruin your financial life.
	That's one probably that we should all take a look at as well.
	All right, let's get back to you on the telephone at 1-800-282-2882.
	Don't let me forget this bill of responsibilities.
	That's your responsibility here, H.R. and Mike, because we're going to 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 WJR email, and I couldn't get it to them because I couldn't traffic in somebody else's work.
	But this one is on an internet site for, let's see, the Freedoms Foundation.
	This goes back to 1985 from the Freedoms Foundation, which is the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge, FFVF.org.
	But I'll read that in just a moment.
	I want to 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.
	My concern listening to the conversation with the two individuals, the $400 million retiree and Mr. Stein, a lot of times, you know, we talk about the complaints and the American public, and we get upset thinking we're ripped off.
	And I kind of feel I'm kind of in the middle class myself.
	I'm a retire of Delphi, worked for GM for 39 years and retired from Delphi after 42.
	My concern is the erosion of the middle class.
	I can't agree with Mr. Stein more.
	I don't think Shaq's worth his money and I don't think George Clooney's worth his money.
	It's just hard for me in the middle class seeing kind of the inflation ebb away at retirement and things that I spend money on.
	I've been a sports fan all my life, yet I have problem with the 220 hitter making millions of dollars.
	And I have the same problem with the corporate.
	You don't even have to, believe me, you don't have to go on.
	I have trouble with the fact 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 is the way it is.
	But you know, Paul Harvey said something this morning on my morning show today on WJR there in Detroit, which I hope you listen to there for a segment.
	Paul Harvey said, if this is correct, and I don't have the exact quote in front of me, that 26 years ago, the CEO, the boss, the head of the company, made $10 for every $1 that one of his employees or one of the workers on the line or whatever made.
	Today, it's $430 to every $1.
	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 a bigger divide between the haves and the have-nots and a bigger stretch where it seems like the middle class is, well, feeling like you just said you're feeling, William.
	Right.
	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 will talk about it in different ways.
	We will complain about it in different ways.
	But I think that's really frustrating.
	It's important for people to hear you, William, and know that you worked very hard for many, many years.
	You're not a nerd-do-well 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.
	I think the other frustration is we don't know how to change it.
	But yeah, we can vote.
	We can do different things.
	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, I guess we will see.
	Time will tell.
	John in Crofton, Maryland, it's your turn on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
	Hello, John.
	Yeah, good afternoon.
	I heard the President was on at 10 a.m. today talking about this gasoline, the high price of gasoline, and I guess he probably offered some suggestions on where to go from here.
	And I imagine there are going to be congressional hearings, and he's going to have the Energy Department and Justice Department involved.
	Of course, the IRS should be involved auditing every one of these gas companies to see what they're really making and to take criminal action where it's necessary.
	Now, I'm a conservative.
	I'm a Republican.
	I usually don't talk this way.
	I believe in the free market, but I think the consumers are being left 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 going to kill the economy eventually.
	And I think the first thing the president should do is talk to the nation, nationally televised address at a time when most people can hear him, not at 10 a.m. in the morning, but around 8 or 9 p.m. on all the networks, and say the first thing he's going to do is declare an emergency and drop the federal tax on every gallon of gas.
	He's going to have a meeting with all 50 governors and force them or encourage them to do the same thing with the state tax.
	That ought to take off about 50 cents per gallon, say on a $3 per gallon price for gas.
	If you look at what the oil companies say they've made recently, it's under 10%.
	And he's talked about waiving some EPA regulations to relieve fuel shortages.
	He's talked about too many localized fuels, the boutique fuels.
	He thinks they need to expand refining capacity.
	He did do all that, but you're right.
	It was in the morning and 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 and Paul W. Smith.
	1-800-282-2882.
	1-800-282-2882 and RushLimbaugh.com.
	This is Paul W. Smith in for Russian taking your calls.
	Albert is in Lowell, Massachusetts, and it's your turn to be heard.
	Hello, Albert.
	Hello, Paul.
	Great show.
	Thanks.
	I totally agree with your guest that you've had on today.
	My comment is on refineries.
	You're always hearing about why don't the oil companies build new refineries?
	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, in the downstream, we continue to efficiently expand our existing facilities at a fraction of the cost of building new refineries.
	Over the last 10 years, ExxonMobil's refining capacity has increased an average of 50,000 barrels per day per year.
	This is the equivalent to building a new grassroots refinery every three years.
	Wow.
	Hey, does this mean you've got their paperwork?
	Are you a stockholder?
	I'm a long-time stockholder.
	So are you a multi-multi-millionaire?
	Absolutely not.
	I've worked 30 years for one company.
	I've been retired now for a few years.
	I'm almost 70 years old, 67 years old.
	Worked hard all my life, and I've held ExxonMobil since 1987.
	And you've done pretty well with it.
	I've done very well.
	All right, well, good for you.
	Because there are a lot of people who hold that stock and lots of us who don't even know it.
	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 ExxonMobil is in there.
	As we heard earlier from Ben Stein, of all the different retirement plans and other different stock funds that are benefiting from all of this gain that ExxonMobil has had.
	Don't like it when we're at the gas pump, however.
	I appreciate your call on that, Albert.
	Dave is in Easton, Pennsylvania, and checking in.
	Hello, Dave.
	Good morning.
	How are you?
	Or good afternoon in this case?
	Or whatever it might be.
	Yeah, I'm doing fine.
	I hope you are.
	I got a little point to make about the taxes.
	We've talked about the increasing cost per gallon of gasoline and the percentage increase and the revenue that the states have been getting, especially the states.
	The federal government is a flat tax on gas.
	But the point I like to make is the cost that it's going to cost that the state is going to incur in the cost of blacktop 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 going to be getting into when you see all the highway construction and the orange cones, it's going to cost the states a whole lot more money.
	And it's going to trickle right down to the local 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 its taxes.
	Now, most of these townships service maybe 2,000, 3,000 people, and they have to maintain their local roads.
	This is going to be a huge pinch on their budgets.
	You know, I remember back in 93, a ton of blacktop was $43 a ton.
	Now it's up over $80,000, $90 a ton in the span of less than 13 years.
	It doubled in price.
	And that was without the huge increase in the crude oil costs.
	Interesting.
	You know, you put an interesting point on that, Dave, in that in my home state of Michigan, we're looking forward to a bunch of 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.
	And so we're going to get the roads fixed, but we're going to put a lot of people to work.
	And so we look forward to that.
	But 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.
	And that's an angle we hadn't even thought about, Dave.
	Yeah, it's going to cost a large percentage of a budget for some of these, especially the smaller municipalities we have here in Pennsylvania and the states alone.
	I mean, if you look at the interstate highway system, you think about the amount of tonnage of blacktop that goes down on those roads every summer as a maintenance or even for new construction, it's huge.
	It's going to be huge.
	The arm depots of the world probably will not be paving their parking lots this summer.
	No, maybe not.
	Dave, I appreciate that.
	Thanks very much.
	Just a reminder again: Mitt Romney coming up after the top of the hour, Governor Mitt Romney talking about what he has done in his state.
	And there are a lot of people embracing it and keeping an eye on it with Universal Healthcare, Heritage Foundation, conservative, working side by side with Ted Kennedy, Senator Ted Kennedy, not conservative.
	And Mitt Romney's brought them all together.
	Now, there are some people who don't like it.
	The Wall Street Journal has not been a fan of this plan, even as, I guess, as yesterday they had an editorial, Mitt's Market Misfire, What Romney Could Have Done Better for the Uninsured.
	And then April 12th, they wrote, Romney Care, the fine print doesn't match the universal hype.
	We'll give the governor an opportunity, in his own words, to tell us what it is he has done and what he hopes to achieve.
	And obviously, nobody knows for sure if it's going to work, but if it does, it could very well be the template for 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 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 Ed McNamara Terminal, Northwest is a big hub there.
	And 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.
	When you fill up your vehicle, think of Northwest Airlines.
	They got 747-400s.
	Filling one up is like filling up 2,000 SUVs.
	Two years ago, it cost them $48,000 to fill it, to fly from U.S. to Asia, one of their flights.
	Today, and this is like last week, $103,400 to fuel the plane.
	Now, you can buy a ticket from Detroit to Tokyo, then Tokyo back to Detroit.
	Round trip price $624.31.
	Take away government taxes and fees.
	Northwest is left with $554 round trip.
	$554 round trip is $227 one way.
	You pay $227 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?
	Costs 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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