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May 3, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:05
May 3, 2006, Wednesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Well, folks, uh why standby sit tight, strap yourselves in.
It's gonna be one of those days.
Uh we're loaded to the max.
And we're glad to have you with us as we uh set out on a hump day to once again execute broadcast excellence from the EIB Southern Command.
I am Rush Limbaugh, America's anchorman, sitting firmly behind the golden EIB microphone here at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Telephone numbers 800-282-2882 and the email address rush at EIBNet.com.
Damn it, just as I predicted, Mahmood comes out and starts rattling change yesterday, and the gas price is back up 75 bucks.
We had the uh the CEO of ExxonMobil today, who's uh his name is Rex Tillerson.
He was on the Today Show, and he had to give an economics lesson to Matt Wower.
We have audio sound bites of that.
We've got a lot of gasoline price and oil price news, some of it uh shocking even to me, the AP.
Who is this guy, Myerson?
I don't know how'd they let this guy out of the cage.
They've got some economic analysts that they let write the truth about things.
Um also uh uh Max Boot, the LA Times has a fascinating piece today on just who's really benefiting from these uh high oil prices and hint hint, it ain't big oil.
It's big dictator.
And we'll have details on that.
We also have you heard about this.
This actually came from yesterday, but I didn't have a chance to squeeze it in yesterday.
Have you heard about this survey with all these uh kids that don't know anything about a map?
Well, we've had discussions on this program.
Human geography, this loco weed out in uh in in Colorado that got turned in by a student for for you know preaching a bunch.
Jay Bennish, that's right.
Human geography.
And I I said, what happened to old-fashioned geography?
Human geography.
New sociology course, just a new name for it.
Anyway, it's embarrassing.
What uh what what's not being taught?
You can't say the kids don't know it, they're not being taught, is what it boils down to.
Oh, and folks, I have here in my formerly Nick and Fingers copy of uh this morning's brilliant morning update.
A bunch of college professors, survey of 700 of them, uh, have rated the Bush presidency a failure.
A nationwide survey was sent to history and political science departments at 2800 colleges.
Most of them didn't bother to respond.
But of those who did, 58% said that if the Bush presidency were to end now, it would be rated a failure.
I have a fascinating piece from 1986, Los Angeles Times, about how conservatives were all set to abandon Reagan.
It was over.
Reagan had let us all down.
Iran Contra was raging, and everybody wanted to get the hell out of Dodge as fast as they could so as not to be united with Reagan, not to be supported with him when he came up to his midterm elections in um congressional elections 86.
So I'll I'll get to that.
But what this geography survey shows is that if anybody needs to be rating anybody, we need to be rating teachers.
We need to be rating college professors and teachers instead of presidents, because this rating of Bush and his historians will have no effect on history whatsoever.
But the fact that our idiotic kids out there, sorry, our idiotic teachers are not teaching these kids some simple things like geography.
When do you hear some of the other facts that they don't know that they have wrong?
It's clear that we need to be examining and rating teachers and college professors these days.
So we'll get into that as the program unfolds.
But first, ladies and gentlemen, uh shocking and sad news uh out there.
ABC TV has uh pulled a plug on Commander in Chief, the uh program starring Gina Davis as the first female president of the United States.
That's only half the story.
The uh they just what?
Yeah, they just they just I know that it didn't make it through its first season.
Um chief of network uh yesterday announced it was pulling the show for the rest of the May sweeps and running prime time, the news magazine in its uh Thursday 10 o'clock slot for the final three weeks of the uh TV season.
The series started out as one of the most watched in the fall.
Gina Davis won a golden globe for her portrayal of the first female U.S. president.
However, two extended breaks and behind-the-scenes changes, as well as a schedule move from uh Tuesday to Thursday all contributed to a deep slide in the ratings.
Yet, in a companion story, excuse me, in a companion story, Gina Davis honored for role as president.
This is the media, the drive-by me folks, it's just it's they live in a total fantasy land.
To the strains of hailed the chief.
Actress Gina Davis accepted an award night for her television portrayal of the first woman president of the U.S. from an organization seeking to turn fiction into reality.
When the star of Commander in Chief got to the podium last night, she was given a red, white, and blue sash to put over her gown, similar to one worn by Chile's first woman president, Michelle Bachelet.
This is the coolest thing I ever got, said Gina Davis.
Wow.
I love it.
No way.
So many countries have had a female head of state before us, she told the 500 guests at a dinner in the United Nations delegates dining room, so it's certainly time.
Now the award was presented to the White House Project, a nonprofit organization which works to promote women's voting, political participation, a leadership, with a goal of putting a woman in the White House.
Gina Davis said during her fabulous speech, every interviewer eventually says, Do you think we'll see a female president in our lifetime?
I think it's appalling that we haven't yet.
She said, The crime is not that it's taken so long, but why haven't we done it yet?
She said to loud applause from the predominantly female audience, it included Martha Stewart and former Maryland Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.
Now, doesn't this just illustrate the kind of idiocy that exists out there?
As though somehow somebody sits around and appoints presidents, and we've got a bigot and a sexist who can't get it through his head that we need to appoint a woman because it's about time.
It's a crime that it hasn't happened yet.
And there's even better.
There's a quote here from Rod Lury.
Rod Lury is the filmmaker or a filmmaker.
He's the creator of the TV show, Commander in Chief.
He also got an award.
He c what is this, folks?
It never fails.
Liberal failure is exalted.
When liberals failure, they vault them to the top, they give them awards, and they give them big dinners, and they let them make speeches to illustrate their ignorance to the rest of us.
It's stunning.
So this guy Rod Lury, the creator of Commander in Chief, he also got an award.
And he uh he called the question of whether the United States is ready for a female president insulting.
From now on, my answer is are we ready for more of what we've got?
And listen to this.
Females represent 51% of the country.
It's absurd, Lurie said that they're not represented in the highest level of power and not even given that opportunity.
Not even given that opportunity.
I am I'm really controlling myself here, folks, to to practice restraint to avoid uttering a string of profanities.
This is just sheer idiocy.
Mr. Lurie, any woman can run for president anytime she wants.
More than a few have.
If a conservative woman is the Republican nominee in 2008, she's got my vote.
Ironically, I'll bet you wouldn't vote for her.
And I'll bet Gina Davis wouldn't vote for it.
I bet Kathleen Kennedy Townsend wouldn't vote for it.
I bet Martha Stewart wouldn't vote for it.
I bet none of the people in your silly audience last night at the UN delegates dining room.
Yep, yep, yep, yep, yahoo.
We're all impressed, would vote for a conservative, but you wouldn't vote for Condoleez Rice if she were the Republican presidential nominee.
All this why hasn't a woman's?
They can get power.
And I'm going to tell you what.
It's a sad, sad, sad state of affairs when an actress, an actress, an actress is honored for playing a part in a TV show that nobody watched.
It is absolutely a sad state when an actress is given an award for playing a role on a TV show that nobody watched, in which she was obviously a wowsy president.
It's a TV show.
Marie Wilson, president of the White House Project, said that the Epic Awards, I guess that's what these things were less than.
I don't know what Epic stands for.
I'm not even going to worry and try to find out.
Acknowledge the power of media and popular culture.
She thanked Gina Davis and Rob Lury, Rod Lurie for bringing the concept of a female president to life and doing it so well.
It bombed.
What is Hillary Clinton think of this?
This was to set her up, folks.
This was to set Hillary Clinton up.
And it bombed big time.
But there is Hillary Clinton out there.
She is seeking to become the first female president.
And who are they giving an award to?
An actress who appeared on a TV show that bombed that nobody watched.
Now listen to this.
Anita Hill, who accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during the 91 hearings on his nomination to Supreme Court, presented another award to Jeff Skull, founder of Participant Productions for making North Country, a movie about courageous women who led a fight against sexual harassment in the Minnesota mines.
I, for one, am thankful we live in an age where we have role models like Anita Hill to show us the way forward, Skull said.
And this comes on the heels, have you seen the big big news out today that a stay-at-home mom, if she were fairly compensated, 134 grand?
What do you mean, charge you?
Well you mean charge it.
Charge it.
Just charge snerdily saying he wouldn't pay it.
You don't have to worry about it.
You don't have one.
You don't have a stay-at-home mom.
You don't even have a stay-at-home girlfriend.
So you don't you don't need to worry about it.
But there's I tell you, it's an election year, and all of the liberal institutions are starting to fire both barrels now.
We also have some uh immigration fallouts, some funny pictures to share with you that popped up uh yesterday, anti-capitalist uh pictures.
Uh and and uh banners and and protest signs.
I mean, I folks, I know these people like every square inch of my glorious naked body, not just the back of my hand.
I'll be right back and we'll continue with all the rest of this.
All right, here's the uh here's the lost generation on geography story.
This is despite wall-to-wall coverage of the uh damage from Hurricane Katrina, nearly one-third of young Americans recently polled could not find Louisiana on a map.
Nearly half were unable to identify Mississippi.
That'll actually make liberals happy because uh, you know, that's the that's a south, and that's where they go to church every day with guns in back of their cars, and they say prayers and so forth, and they race cars out there on dirt tracks.
Bunch of hicks.
The fact that kids don't know where Louisiana and Mississippi are, liberals probably love that.
Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 fared even worse with foreign locations.
Six in ten could not find Iraq.
According to the uh Roper poll conducted for National Geographic.
Geographic illiteracy impacts our economic well-being, our relationships and other nations and the environment isolates from the world, said National Geographic President John Fehe in announcing a program to help remedy the props.
Here we go.
We have we have a system set up to teach people.
It's called the schools.
But the schools are botching it, so now this Faye guy is announcing a program to help remedy the problem.
Is this not typical?
I've never understood why we have job training centers when we have schools.
I thought that's one of the reasons we went to school.
But apparently people get out and they have not the slightest concept of how to get a job.
So we set up these little centers.
And I'm not talking about the vocational tech schools.
Those were those were part of uh high school when I was there.
If you wanted to go to Vogech, you went to Votech for for part of the day.
But now, since they can't find a rock and another word of Louisiana and Mississippi are, we need a program to help remedy the problem.
Uh the National Geographic hopes to enlist businesses, nonprofit groups, and educators in a bid to improve geographic literacy.
I can't keep a straight face.
I uh but but I mean I'd I'm we'd be glad to help, but in lit businesses?
Businesses are gonna and nonprofit groups and educators?
Isn't that the problem?
The educators are the pro now you're gonna slough it off on businesses to fix the problem?
Well, you're gonna have to hire these people.
They're gonna say to business and you want them informed.
Yeah, but it's not my job to teach them.
I'm not running a school here.
I'm running a business.
This is so this is I'm not I'm not exaggerating this, folks.
This is terrible.
This is an indictment of our education system.
Uh what they have planned here is a five-year multimedia campaign called My Wonderful World.
It'll target children eight to seventeen.
When?
When do they have time?
Eight to seven, what are they going to do?
This after school, do it on Saturdays?
You have to give up watching Captain Planet to go to the uh my wonderful world school.
The goal is to motivate parents and educators to expand geographic offerings in school at home and in their communities.
Am I a lone wolf on this?
Am I the only one who is literally flabbergasted by this?
It's called the public school system.
We just I just mentioned the fact this Jay Benish uh guy out in uh where was he?
It's outside.
Yeah, I know, but uh is that Overland Park Heist outside Denver.
Uh oh, and here's look here's a former President Clinton, the William H. Clinton Foundation, or whatever the hell it is, big announcement.
Our our ex-president had been busy.
Do you know what, folks?
He is going to see to it that soda pop is not available in the schools anymore because of the damage that sugar does to the toufs, the teefs, and the uh and and the overall health of our youths.
So uh this is what we're focusing on.
We're focusing on getting fast food out of there.
We're focused on getting soda pop out of there.
Uh by the way, one one good thing about getting soda pop out, it won't strain a stain any dresses.
Uh Clinton has experience with that.
But I mean, come on.
Big deal.
He's gonna get all kinds of credit.
Oh, he cares.
Oh, I'm so happy we have a former president who gets it.
Okay, big deal.
Soda pop out of the schools.
Now we gotta set up this whole satellite program in order to teach kids basic geography.
Well, they're gonna have their work cut out for them because listen to some of the results of the survey.
510 people interviewed in December and January.
Among the findings.
One-third of respondents couldn't couldn't find Louisiana on a map, and 48% didn't know where Mississippi was.
Fewer than three in ten think that it's important to know the locations of countries in the news, and just 14% believe that speaking another language is a necessary skill.
Two-thirds didn't know that the earthquake that killed 70,000 people in October 2005 occurred in Pakistan.
Six in ten could not find a rock on a map of the Middle East.
It's only been on television for how many since 1991, practically every day.
It's been on television.
While the outsourcing of jobs to India has been a major U.S. business story, 47% could not find the Indian subcontinent on a map of Asia.
While Israeli-Palestinian strife has been in the news for the entire lives of the respondents.
75% had no idea where Israel was.
On a map of the Middle East.
Nearly three-quarters incorrectly named English is the most widely spoken native lingo.
Six in ten did not know the border between North and South Korea is the most heavily fortified it in the world.
In fact, 30% of these survey respondents thought that the most heavily fortified border was between the United States and Mexico.
What is this?
I don't have to know.
Oh.
I uh Mr. Snerdley is assuming uh and imagining what the what some of uh some of the new castrat here out there saying uh Mr. Limbaugh, you don't have to know where Iraq is to know that we shouldn't be there.
That we were there to get oil, that the oppressive United States is evil.
I guess it's true.
You don't you don't have to know where Iraq is to know that we shouldn't be there.
That will be one of the uh replies, no doubt.
In the meantime, we got these college professors rating the Bush administration and presidency as a failure.
Uh I'll talk a little bit more, talk a little bit more about this when we uh when we get back, but it is clear here that uh we we need to start rating other things.
We rate the presidency every day.
We know what we think about it anyway.
We get news like this.
We need to start seriously rating schools.
Because this is folks, you know damn well who's gonna be paying for all this, set up satellite schools to teach geography and maps and so forth.
What is the purpose of the public school system anyway?
And this is not the first instance of this.
They have to teach a lot of stuff that they don't learn in school by reading.
Uh Saga continues, a man, a legend, a way of life.
All right.
My friends, all these professors rate Bush a failure as a president.
No secret, liberals infest America's college camp eye.
The only surprise here is that the Bush has failure number is not higher than 58% amongst these pointy headed elitists.
But you know, some all these surveys on Bush's presidency, they don't affect history.
What these guys think about what Bush's presidency uh is irrelevant to history.
What matters more, as we have learned more than ever recently, what matters more is what American students learn about our history and our country.
And I will guarantee you this that during World War II, students understood who our enemies were and the necessity of defeating them.
National security secrets were not leaked in leading newspapers.
Had they been, students would not have been taught the leakers were whistleblowers who deserved heroes status.
There weren't any Hollywood anti-war filmmakers in World War II, and if there had been, they are the ones who would not have been welcomed on campus, not military recruiters.
Lawsuits were not filed to keep military recruiters off camp high.
Instead, you know what was taught?
American exceptionalism was taught as as far back as the 50s and 60s when I was in school, American exceptionalism was taught.
The American-born institutions and traditions and ideas that make our nation unique.
From our capitalist system to the spirit of rugged individualism, the heroes of our past who embodied all those things, those were the heroes.
Those were the people I learned about, those are the people that we were told about.
American students were taught and understood the sacrifices of previous generations.
And that told us and gave us a way of life worth defending to the death.
Now all we hear from the left is failure, failure, failure, doom, doom, doom, gloom, gloom, gloom, pessimism after pessimism.
Uh you want to talk failure?
Let's look at the American education system.
I don't care if you want to call it middle school, elementary school, half screw, or colleges.
Presidential polls do not matter, but what has happened to America's institutions of higher learning does, and it clearly is a huge problem.
All right, let's go to the audio sound bites of Democrats think they're on a roll.
They're confident as they can be.
Gas prices, the higher they go, they are convinced.
Just remember when uh when Gephardt was happy when the stock market was plummeting.
For every uh what, every point drop or ten-point drop in the stock market, or every hundred-point drop they picked up a seat or ten seats, or they were they were ecstatic.
I said, I couldn't understand this.
They're out there celebrating the plummeting stock market because they think it's gonna vault them back to power.
It has yet to do so.
Late yesterday at a press conference on Capitol Hill, uh, behind a sign, or actually in front of a sign, the Democrats uh erected that that said, Americans deserve relief at the pump.
We had a montage here, uh, Chuck Schumer, Harry Reed, and uh uh Nancy Pelosi.
George Bush believes in his bones that what's good for Exxon Mobile is good for America.
That's how he was raised, that's how he was brought up.
The little tiny rebate they were suggesting for two tank Phillips basically what it amounts to is gone, because the oil companies need to make more money.
What I have to say is that sadly we are living in a new era of robber barons.
American Consumer is paying record prices while oil companies make record profits and make record contributions to the Republicans.
She's foolish.
She's a fool.
Robber barons?
She has no understanding of history.
Robber bar before I get into that though, did you hear Dingy Harry?
This little tiny rebate they were suggesting for two tank fill-ups.
Basically what it amounts to is gone because the oil companies need to make more money.
That's the hundred dollar rebates that the Republicans proposed.
And Dingy Harry announces that the reason that the hundred dollar rebates are going to the oil company says it's too small.
We got to give people more money so they can continue to buy gasoline.
Folks, as to this robber baron business, I wouldn't worry about it because the way the education system's been going in this country for a while, I doubt that very many Americans know what the robber barons were.
I don't know how many of you know what the robber baron?
Who's she even talking about when she talks about the robber baron?
Dawn, do you know?
Don doesn't know.
Brian, do you know I'm not trying to embarrass any Brian doesn't know?
Uh Snerdley, do you know?
What do I prove it to me then?
Who were they?
The...
The monopolists, the monopolists, the railroad guys, all the rig robber, steep big steel, yeah, all this, all this before uh they came along and busted up the trust.
All right.
Uh what to do with this?
Robber barons.
Folks, I want you to listen carefully on this because this this is key.
We all agree there's a there's a problem.
People think it's a problem, it's an economic problem.
And uh uh when America has a problem, when America needs a solution, the last person in the world you should seek out is Nancy Pelosi or any Democrat.
They don't want a solution.
They want you feeling miserable, they want you feeling pessimistic because that makes them think you're gonna vote for them.
Now, this robber barons business, I I know I've been told that girls aren't supposed to be good at math, but for heaven's sake, this is simple arithmetic.
Just I'm gonna use a number here because I'm sure it's applicable to somebody out there.
Let's say a tank full of gasoline costs you fifty-five dollars.
Here's the question.
If big oil did not take one cent in profit, what would that fifty-five dollar tank full of gas cost you?
The profit is nine cents per gallon.
So if big oil didn't take one cent in profit, a fifty-five dollar tank full of gas would cost you fifty dollars.
Twice what people want to pay at twenty-five bucks a fill-up.
So if big oil, the robber barons don't take any profit of fifty-five dollar fill-up is still gonna cost you fifty.
And when there was no profit, if we if we were to pull this off, if there were no profit and a fifty-five dollar tank full cost somebody fifty, who would the liberals blame then?
I mean, d the sheer stupidity of the robber baron shot weren't lame enough.
The day she used it was even more revealing.
It was yesterday.
What's so special about yesterday?
Because yesterday Bolivia seized control of the energy fields and threatened to nationalize them.
Natural gas here in this case is what we're talking about.
It's part of the same problem.
Because where there's oil, there's natural gas.
Now, if Bolivia, and it's not yet a done deal, but if Bolivia violates all the contracts and pulls a castor on just nationalizes everything, seizes all energy supplies, it would leave uh Exxon Mobil, the robber barons, screwed out of about three billion dollars in investments.
It would leave the Brazilian robber barons screwed out of about three and a half billion.
There's a one and a half billion in natural gases, two billion dollar pipeline everybody's talking about.
It would leave the Spanish robber barons, which is the Spanish uh oil companies, uh, out of one billion.
You got Exxon Mobiles put three billion in there, the Brazilian uh oil companies put three and a half billion, the Spanish oil companies who put one billion.
If these fields over there are indeed nationalized, Nancy Pelosi's robber barons lose multiple billions.
Let me tell you something.
As an American, I am embarrassed that someone so inept could rise so high in the minority party.
Let me give you some more information on this.
Because I tell you, everybody think that we've got big oil and they're raping everybody.
It's big dictator time, folks.
Of the top 14 oil exporters, only one is a well established liberal democracy, that is Norway.
Two others have recently made a transition to democracy, Mexico and Nigeria.
Iraq is trying to follow in their footsteps.
That's it.
Every other major oil exporter is a dictatorship, and the run-up in oil prices has been a tremendous boon to them.
As I keep pointing out the case of Mahmood Ahmadinejad.
Max Boot writes in the Los Angeles Times today.
My associate at the Council on Foreign Relations, Ian Cornwall, calculates that if oil averages $71 a barrel this year, ten autocracies or dictatorships stand to make about $500 billion more than they did in 2003 when oil was at $27 a barrel.
This windfall helps to squelch liberal forces and entrench noxious dictators in such oil producers as Russia, which stands to make $115 billion more this year than in 2003.
Venezuela, $36 billion more this year than 2003.
Of course, Putin and Hugo Chavez can buy off their publics with generous subsidies and ignore Western pressure while sabotaging democratic development from Central America to Central Asia.
This is uh what Max Boot calls the dictatorship dividend.
It also subsidizes Sudan's ethnic cleansing.
Sudan stands to earn 4.7 billion dollars more this year because of the rise in oil price than it did in 2003.
Iran's development of nuclear weapons stands to benefit because they're going to make 45 billion dollars more this year than 2003.
And uh Saudi Arabia's proselytization for the Wahhabi fundamentalism, the Saudis will make a hundred and forty-nine billion dollars more this year than they did in 2003.
Even in uh close American allies like Kuwait, they got 35 billion more, and the United Arab Emirates, 36 billion more, that's Dubai.
Odds are that some of the extra money will find its way into the pockets of terrorists.
Now, if we if we seize the Saudi and Iranian oil fields and ran the pumps full speed, oil prices would plummet, dictators would be broke, and poor nations would benefit from cheap energy, but we'd be called imperialist impressors if we did that.
So I want to go through these numbers again because you think it's Exxon Mobil scoring big, and you think it's uh uh uh uh Conaco Phillips and all that.
When you look at who's really benefiting from all, and then when you look at these numbers, these ten autocracies stand to make about five hundred billion dollars more than in two thousand three than they're making than uh the that the uh uh today than they did in two thousand three.
Then you ask yourself, where are we in this list?
Well, we can't drill for oil because environmentalist wacks and the wacko left is converted concerned that this this is a this is a horrible commodity, and we can't it pollutes, it's filthy, it's causing global warming.
We can't get any more of it, can't go to and war.
We can't we can't fulfill uh our own energy needs by expanding our operations, exploring for more crude.
Nope, no, we can't do it.
So all these other autocracies and dictatorships score huge ways to fund terrorism.
We don't get to participate in this much because we can't drill for any more oil.
There is no motive for any of these dictatorships and autocracies to participate in any problem or plan, rather, that would that would reduce uh uh prices.
In fact, the Saudi, one of the Saudi oil ministers said, You guys, if you you you you politicians, you keep jawing the price up yourself, you keep panicking everybody.
If you'd shut up about it, the oil price would fall $15 a barrel.
The Saudi oil expert said that, uh minister.
Uh and the OPEC guy, the OPEC guy is out there saying, you can't affect the price, don't care what you did, do everything is too global here, and there's nothing anybody can do about it.
It's gonna be what it's gonna be.
Uh, and we see all Mahmood has to do is start rattling the chains about war.
We're back up to $75 a barrel, and he profits as do all these other dictatorships.
So when you really want to talk about big oil Ms. Pelosi and Robber Barons, your Friendly dictators that you have a tough time condemning, they're the ones raping everybody, scoring big time.
They're the ones getting all the benefits.
And she says that on a day that Bolivia threatens to nationalize all those fields.
She's a just an idiot, folks.
It's just striking.
How such an uneducated, uninformed idiot can rise to such levels of power in the Democratic.
Well, I guess it's not strange.
Yes, yes, yes, having uh having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have El Rushball and the excellence in broadcasting network.
Okay, I have uh cleverly, artfully, brilliantly, intelligently, and simply laid out for you what's really going on with the price of oil.
I haven't included the commodities markets, but they obviously are the fact you'll hear the Exxon Mobile CEO claim that the commodities markets determine the price of oil.
That's coming up in just a moment.
Despite all this, it's an election year.
And and and our I'll tell you, our brave congressman folks, they feel our pain, and they aren't going to put up with it.
And so, worried about the political heat from high gasoline prices, the House of Representatives is preparing to vote on a bill that would impose criminal and civil penalties on any energy company caught price gouging.
Uh, exempt from this will be the dictators in these ten autocracies who are scoring huge profits, particularly Mahmood in Iran, for uh drawing the price per barrel up.
The legislation authored by a Republican, Heather Wilson from New Mexico calls for penalties of up to 150 million dollars for refiners and other wholesalers, and two million dollars for retailers.
Okay, so that's that's connected.
This is irrelevant.
They've we just had an investigation by all these attorney generals and so forth.
All these states announced it yesterday can't find any evidence of price gouging.
They can't find, they can't prove it.
And of course, that doesn't matter.
But Heather Wilson and the members of Congress want you to know that they're looking out for you.
A little economics question here.
We keep hearing about the windfall profits tax, which is an excess profits tax.
I mean, that's that right there is bad enough.
And it's bad enough to call these captains of industry from the 19th century, the twentieth century robber barons.
They were not robber barons.
These were the people that set this country up for prosperity.
People like um Henry Ford and the Rockefellers.
Uh uh, the Carnegie's, John Jacob Astard.
They made a huge contributions to the prosperity that we uh live for today and experience today.
Oh, they were the robber barons.
Now we got to go to the same people that called captains of industry robber barons.
Now we're going to have the excess profits tax.
When you hear windfall, think excess.
Somebody's going to sit there and determine what's too much.
Who?
Brilliant congressmen and senators who couldn't produce a drop of gasoline at the pump if their lives depended on it.
So, you've heard that previous attempts at windfall profits taxes have actually uh not worked and that they have reduced supplies.
My simple question is how does that happen?
There's an economic reason for this.
And it has nothing to do with duplicity or gouging or anything else.
If you are big oil, and you know that Congress is going to slap you with a windfall profits tax, but it's only going to be temporary.
They can't keep it permanent.
You history is it only goes on temporarily.
You have an asset to sell, in this case, big oil, you sell refined products from oil.
You know that its value is going to go higher.
It always does in time.
So do you sell that now with this penalty tax in place?
Or do you hold it for future sale at a higher price when the political punishment tax dies of failure?
Because that's exactly what happens.
It's supply and demand.
You tax an activity, you get less of the activity.
You tax a commodity, you get less of the commodity.
You put a windfall profits tax on oil, and they're just going to withhold it from the market to avoid paying the tax.
Ergo, we're going to have shortages.
They'll release it when the price goes higher when there is no windfall profits tax.
It doesn't work.
It can't work.
It won't work.
It never has worked.
Don't buy it.
Okay, the earthquake is near the nation of Tonga.
8.0 on a Richter scale.
Everybody's expecting tsunamis to wipe out Fiji in 30 minutes and hit New Zealand in 90 minutes.
Oh, we're keeping a sharp eye on this.
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