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Nov. 21, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:28
November 21, 2006, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Time Text
All right, right here it is.
For those of you watching on the Ditto Cam.
See, I told you so, a special bound edition from uh well, I'm thinking 1994.
Nope, 1993.
I was off by a year.
Second of the two books I've written.
Sold two and a half million copies, the first two million in eight weeks.
So it wasn't on the bestseller list long.
But in this book, in this uh in this book, uh is the true story of Thanksgiving.
And it's uh it's one of the things that I wanted to put in.
It's in chapter six, Dead White Guys or What History Books Never Told You.
And it was inspired by the uh notion that you know I have that history education and woefully inept uh in this country.
That's coming up in this hour.
It is the EIB network.
Open line Friday on Tuesday today, be off tomorrow as special extended Thanksgiving break.
Mullah Hedgecock will be here tomorrow.
Roger Hedgecock from uh from San Diego.
We call him Mullah Hedgecock as an affectionate um affectionate name.
So whatever you want to talk about, feel free today, folks.
We've got an hour left here, 800-282-2882.
And uh email address rush at eIBNet.com.
I referenced early in the program that we have a dropout rate of 2,500 students per day in U.S. Hass Screwels.
And I've got the story here.
Put it on top of the stack.
The um sources, ABC News.com.
It's by Pierre Thomas and Jack Date.
In several of the largest screw systems across the country, from Baltimore to Cleveland to Atlanta to Oakland, California.
Half, half the students are dropping out.
And the problem's not only in a big cities.
A recent study by the Department of Education found that 31% of American students were dropping out or failing to graduate in the nation's largest 100 public districts.
We need more money for education, Rush.
We need more money for education.
We need more money for health care.
We need Yeah, we're spending so much damn money on education that it's not educating anybody.
But I mean, this is this isn't incredible here.
It is estimated that about 2,500 students drop out of U.S. Has Screwels every day.
There were 1,200 students in my high school alone.
That means the equivalent of two of my high schools is dropping out every day.
Now, do you believe that number?
You know, they throw these numbers.
This is it's estimated.
But my gosh, 2500, run the numbers.
How many uh how many years would it take to run through all the students in this country?
300 million people in the country, how many of them are high school students?
Conservative guess.
So we need to run these numbers here.
Would a third of them be high school students?
No.
Not not even a third.
So we can say 75 million?
Okay, so multiply 2500 times 365.
Or, well, the school year is what?
200 185 days.
2500 times uh you got a calculator there, Brian, you're doing this or is am I being fooled?
All right, 2500 students times 180.
And tell me what that equals.
450,000.
Okay, now divide, let's see, it's 450,000 students.
Well, we'd have to set up a ratio to get this.
See, I know old math.
I could do this on paper and old math.
So we've got we've got 450,000 per school year.
So uh in 10 years, that would be uh uh 4.5 million.
So, okay, it's gonna get it's gonna take a significant number of years.
Um I can already tell that.
But we could eventually see to it that there are no high school students.
If this many are dropping out, I find it incredible.
Consider this.
Has screwed dropouts have a lifespan nine years shorter than people who graduate.
Dropouts are more likely to face poverty, according to the Census Bureau.
You need to study for that.
Typically, high school dropouts earn $19,000 a year.
High school graduates earn $28,000 a year on average.
If you drop out of Haskell, your chances of running afoul of the law increase.
Nationally, 68% of state prison inmates are uh dropouts.
2500 a day, ladies and gentlemen.
I'm looking for uh another item here I put in the stack.
Oh, uh let's let's look at this in the in the in the context of the minimum wage for just a second.
Because what do we what do we what do we see here?
Typically has scrual dropouts are $19,000 a year.
Um let's see.
Oh, Brandon, it's a quick number uh running here again.
Uh the federal minimum wage is uh, well, the states have raised let's say the federal minimum wage is $550, I guess $515, right?
We'll use it or $5.
No, let's make it six.
Six dollars an hour.
I need to know what six dollars an hour times forty equals a year.
Six dollars, just just give me six times forty times um fifty-two.
And the six times forty.
Okay, so the minimum wage guy is earning twelve thousand buffs.
That's what that number comes out to.
Minimum wage, twelve thousand.
A high school dropouts earning nineteen thousand.
High school drow the minimum wage.
Here's here's another way to look at this.
What is the family income of the average minimum age worker?
Go ahead, take a guess.
Recall everything you've heard about the minimum wage and pick a number.
Are you ready?
The average family income is of a of a minimum wage worker is forty-nine thousand eight hundred and eighty-five dollars.
Now hang in there.
That's almost fifty thousand dollars a year for those of you in Rio Linda.
Now, I know this is hard to believe, but it's from a Heritage Foundation report in August of this year.
All these horror stories, all that oratory, all that tinkering with your emotions.
For what?
The number of workers who report earning the minimum wage or less is less than two million.
The number this according to the Heritage Foundation, the number of workers who report earning the minimum wage or less is less than two million.
It's far less if you take out those who work for tips at restaurants.
In other words, two-thirds of the minimum wage earners in America are part-time workers.
Forty percent have some college or even a degree.
82% of minimum wage workers are white.
Now, if you hear different figures suggesting a different greater problem, uh, what I suspect is the liberals are doing what they do best, and that's misleading you.
Now, I'm talking about workers on the federal minimum wage, a wage that the Democrats want to raise, it's $5.15 an hour.
But 22 states already have higher, and some of them are much higher, state minimum wages.
So while the debate is about the federal minimum of $515 an hour, they're talking about the word minimum.
Now, aren't they clever?
Aren't they shrewd?
Aren't they good at hoodwinking you?
But Rush, but Rush, but Rush, the Democrats have made an increase in the minimum wage uh as as a number one priority.
Shouldn't, shouldn't, shouldn't priority number one fix a major problem?
No, folks, that's not what this is about.
Liberal priority number one is to fool you into thinking they care that they have a heart.
Meanwhile, in addition to the federal minimum wage and the state minimum wage, we also have the free market minimum wage, which is a lot higher than either, and it's a lot more sensible.
Uh again, the source is the Heritage Foundation and uh and the manipulation of figures, federal minimum versus uh state minimum, I'm just assuming uh here.
Uh who earns the minimum wage, single parents or suburban teenagers.
Uh it it is it is we you say, well, Rush, how how can you say the average family income of a minimum minimum age worker is 4985?
Because the minimum age minimum wage worker is not the only breadwinner in his house.
And the liberals are leading everybody to believe that the minimum wage needs to go up because there are people who are supporting families of four on that.
And uh and they aren't.
And it's less than two million people.
Um so students dropping out of high school reaches epidemic levels, $2,500 a day.
And we are paying teachers to do what?
You know, it's it's it's really too bad we're not paying these teachers per for their performance, because if $2,500 students are dropping out of school every day, we could really reduce teacher pay because they're not doing their jobs, ladies and gentlemen.
Rush, that's cruel of you to say they're trying hard.
They may be, but they're not motivating people to stay in school one or their parents are to somebody's not.
Maybe, maybe maybe we should um draft the teachers.
Teachers get exemption for the draft because their role's so important.
But if 2500 high school students are dropping out every day, estimated.
Draft teachers, Mr. Wrangle.
You actually could point fingers uh right at the teachers' unions for this.
Um they are the utter failures.
Uh if you look at students as customers, and you're losing this many customers a day, you would be fired.
Stockholders are screaming their heads off.
But the truth is uh I suspect that there's not all that much disappointment in certain segments of this society because a dumb voter is usually a Democrat.
Uh not dumb.
Let's say an uneducated voter is usually a Democrat.
So there's a little bit of a contradiction here.
And then there's this from yesterday, Health Daily News.
Most students dread them, but school tests do help kids remember everything they've learned, even information that's not on the tests, according to new research.
In three spearments, with fifty-four to eighty-four undergraduates, researchers at Washington University of St. Louis concluded that students who wrote tests had better enhanced long-term recall of all material they studied, while students who weren't tested recalled much less of what they'd studied even after they were given extra time to review the material.
Really, we need a research project for this.
We needed to sit around and study this.
All this is is tradition.
The old tried and true method of learning actually works.
And yet the teachers' unions will not allow their own teachers to be tested for competence.
Wonder why that is.
Back to the phones we go with a real story of Thanksgiving on tape this hour.
Susie in Chattanooga, Tennessee, thanks for waiting, and welcome to the EIB network.
Hey, Russ, thanks for taking my call.
You bet.
Um I just want to tell you thank you for teaching me every day.
I learned from you, and then I teach my kids, and they are also learning from you, and they're home today, so they're getting to listen to you.
I'm glad they're gonna get to hear the Thanksgiving story.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
Uh-huh.
And I I feel like I'm just talking to a friend because I listen to you so much.
I am a 24-7 member, and so I get your limbaughter.
And um I was so excited to see that article this month of with uh Joel Rosenberg that you did.
And I am reading his books, and um I do happen to agree with most of his theories.
I I think he's very accurate, even though they are fiction.
I think a lot of what he bases it on is very accurate.
And I do sometimes feel like that affects my optimism about our country, although I love this country, and I think it's the greatest country in the world.
How do you juggle that sometimes?
I mean, it you have to admit it's what beliefs.
Here's here's what's here's what I think what's affecting you about what Joel uh said in the interview, what he writes is his books are based on biblical scripture, and he takes uh uh situations occurring in the Middle East and applies them to biblical biblical scripture uh and says that there's prophecy.
In fact, one of his books is entitled The Ezekiel Prophecy.
And so uh you are uh you're you're being affected, and I don't blame I mean it's this is your free too.
You're you can read it and uh draw what conclusion you want.
But any time anybody starts thinking about the apocalypse, that we're in the last days of, and I assure you that every generation of human beings since the beginning of time has thought that.
Uh and the last days uh are not upon us yet.
The thing that you have to do out there, Susie is now think about that.
Um because if if it's true, there's nothing you're going to be able to do to stop it anyway.
All you can do is prepare yourself for um your uh your immortality and your eternity in the in the uh event it happens, which is I'm sure something you do in the course of the day-to-day living of your life, correct?
Right.
I'm not afraid.
That's what I wanted to say.
I I have no fear because of my fake.
But I just have a hard time talking with people and being optimistic at the same time sometimes.
Well, look, b uh not a lot of most people are not optimists in general, even without a war in Iraq and even without Democrats winning elections.
Most people are not optimists.
That's why books on positive thinking make millions, and books on how to fail are not even written.
I guess everybody knows how to do it.
We all know how to be pessimistic.
It's uh it's it it's something that comes natural uh or naturally to I think humanity.
It's it's one of the um uh objects of life to learn to overcome that.
Uh but you know, d a daily awareness or consciousness of the apocalypse.
If you believe in that, I mean it's certainly it's gonna it I know you're not depressed, but what's the difference?
I mean, you're you you say you're pessimistic out there.
You you've gotta you you've got you you can't live your life that way.
I I I you can't that that's that's living your life for the worst.
Uh I don't really feel pessimistic.
I just felt like I know you're so optimistic when you talk about the country and the future of our country.
And then the tone of the article with your conversation with him, you seem to to admit how bleak it looked.
And I guess that was my question is do you think?
Well, I don't remember that.
I wonder how my editors edited me in that, because I don't I don't remember sounding pessimistic.
I was trying to draw Joel out on what he thought and what he was trying to say.
Uh but I mean you can look you can look at the situation in the Middle East right now and you can be pessimistic about it.
Uh I mean I'm I'm not always up.
I I'm not always uh uh you know, hunky dory and cheery and so forth.
I'm like anybody else.
Uh but I've I have faith.
And maybe faith is a better word here than than uh optimum.
I have optimism because I have I have faith uh in this country, and I I don't see any evidence yet not to.
Um I I don't you I'm not gonna lose faith in the country because of the election or a single election.
Uh the American people have fixed their mistakes in the past, and some of the people they employ to fix the mistakes fail them.
And those people that fail to fix the mistakes, i.e., elected officials, will s will be sent packing.
Uh and this one of the things that happened here.
Don't don't think the countries embraced liberalism or Democrats in this election.
It didn't happen.
Uh the Democrats uh really benefited from the Republicans uh basically rejecting their own voters in enough places in the States to uh to cause a problem.
But I think, for example, you took you look at the war on terror.
A lot of people, oh my God, we're nobody's willing to fight this thing.
Probably not right now.
Uh it's gonna take a lot more than one 9-11 on this land on our country for people to rally.
But but one thing I have learned in my uh short little speck of time as a human being on the planet, as an American, is that the American people do respond to leadership.
And when they when when the leadership is there and when it and there's we've we've we've been absent leadership at the highest levels for quite a while now on some things that are important, particularly in uh in the in the House and the Senate, if you want to look to political leadership uh as an example.
Uh but i uh I I think when when things become obvious, uh the American people will rally to the cause.
At the same time, the Democrats are doing everything they can, the American left to uh uh sort of uh destroy that spirit uh in the American people.
But I've you know, I just look at the the history of the country, even my little time here as an American.
I mean, every day is a better day in this country than the day before in most respects.
We've always had cultural rot, we've always had uh, you know, up and down uh economic times.
Uh we always win some elections, lose some, our sports teams disappoint us, then they uh create euphoria for us.
Uh the this is uh there's always an ebb and flow emotionally to life as a human being.
It's learning to manage those flows and keep the highs not as high, the lows as uh as not as low as they can be.
But if you look at look at the country uh uh in in any number of ways twenty years ago, fifty years ago, you'd have to say life today is better in America than it's ever Been.
And certainly the opportunity for that is better than it's ever been.
Well, now that uh in terms of your your kids, uh that that ought to that ought to excite you.
Right.
Uh you're worried about the future that they're going to grow up in.
My parents did too.
My I I will never forget, Susie.
Uh my dad, after John Kennedy won the election in 1960, I'm nine years old.
My dad tells my brother, you boys are going to be slaves if you don't stop these communists and liberals.
He feared for our future.
He in his formative experience World War II and the Great Depression.
It was understandable he felt that way.
But and as I said yesterday, he wouldn't, he couldn't relate to my life today.
He would not believe it in any aspect.
For the good, we'll be back.
Stay with us.
Aha, sneaking some Manheim steamroller in here before I have authorized it.
Yeah, I know it's close to Thanksgiving, and it's it's close to Christmas time.
Okay, time for the real story of Thanksgiving.
I want to precede this by sharing with you, and I want to bounce off of uh our last call, Susie.
Uh, and uh sometimes she has trouble being optimistic.
Now, I don't know that this would qualify as something about which you can run around and feel really optimistic about.
Uh something struck me the other day, that it strikes me a lot, by the way.
I was I was um uh went to a dinner party on Friday night, and it was a buffet uh here where I live, before I had to go over to the um the Breakers Hotel and introduce Ann Colter, give her an award uh for David Horowitz's uh restoration weekend.
There were a lot of people at this bash.
And I walking through the buffet and and looking at all of the food that the shrimp uh the all the vegetables and everything, uh the desserts, it just struck me.
Uh I started flashing back to my trip to Afghanistan when I I saw some of the most unbelievable uh human living conditions I have ever seen.
And I can tell you for a fact that the number of average Afghanis who who who eat food in the way we take for granted would is just astoundingly high.
We hear all day long pessimistic stories about shortages of this or that.
We're gonna deplete the oceans of all edible fish in 30 years or whatever the hell stupid notion it was, and we've been hearing these kinds of stories for years, that we're destroying species.
It always amazes me when I actually stop to think about it, just visit a grocery store for credit and imagine how many grocery stores there are in this country.
Look at the food production in this country alone, and look at the relative cheap price that food is in grocery store.
I mean, you can find high price items in there, but the bare essentials, um, market basket price is uh is it because people have to eat.
I mean, there's there's not a whole lot of room for price gouging there unless you go to gourmet places and that kind of thing.
Even that they're available if you want it.
The the amount of food that is produced in this country, the plenty of it it is astounding when you stop to think that wherever you are, in your one grocery store or at your restaurant and you're having dinner.
Imagine millions of such places with the same stuff, and then put it all in somebody's home where they're having Thanksgiving or what have you, or in restaurants or whatever, and it's just astounding to me.
The uh the ability of the earth to produce and provide all this against all these predictions that we're gonna starve, we're gonna have a famine, uh, that the population explosion is gonna wipe out all of these um luxuries and opportunities.
It's just, I don't know, sometimes it just blows me away.
Because I don't have anything to do with producing it.
There are people that do.
And uh I don't know, some I'm just in awe.
I uh you ask me why I am optimistic and so forth, because I am in awe of the country.
Compared to the rest of the world and compared to the attacks that we endure and the uh even our own internal battles of people in this country that hate this country still look at it.
Look at it if you if you want just from the bare essentials.
Look at how many automobiles there are in a used car lot.
Look at how many automobiles there are in junkyards.
Those are the cars in junkyards here that are being driven around in places like Afghanistan.
Or Cuba.
Anywhere else.
We just spoiled.
I think in so many areas that the just the basics are often so taken for granted that their value and what they represent is overlooked.
On occasion.
I mean, we we could even satisfy oddballs that don't want to eat meat, or do who don't want to eat fish.
Whatever your whatever your culinary peculiarities are, somebody's out there making sure that you can get what you want.
Even with all the assaults on the food business that there have been.
Anyway, leads me to the real story of Thanksgiving as written by me in my book, See I Told You So, where on chapter chapter six here dead white guys or what your history books never told you, page 70.
On August 1st of 1620, the Mayflower set sail, carried a total of 102 passengers, including 40 pilgrims led by William Bradford.
On the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract that established just and equal laws for all members of their new community, irrespective of their religious beliefs.
Where did the revolutionary ideas expressed in the Mayflower Compact Compact come from?
Came from the Bible.
The pilgrims were a people completely steeped in the lessons of the old and new testaments.
They looked to the ancient Israelites for their example, and because of the biblical precedence set forth in Scripture, they never doubted that their experiment would work.
But it wasn't a pleasure cruise, folks.
The journey to the new world was a long and arduous one, and when the pilgrims landed in New England in November, they found, according to Bradford's detailed journal, a cold, barren, desolate wilderness, destined to become the home of the Kennedy family.
There were no friends to greet them.
There were no houses to shelter them.
There were no hotels where they could refresh themselves.
And the sacrifice they had made for freedom was just beginning.
During that first winter, half the pilgrims, including Bradford's own wife, died of either starvation, sickness, or exposure.
When spring finally came, Indians taught the settlers how to plant corn, how to fish for cod, and skin beavers for coats.
Yes, it was Indians that taught the white men how to skin beasts.
Life improved for the pilgrims, but they didn't prosper.
Now, this is important to understand because this is where modern American history lessons often end, with the Indians teaching the poor white guys how to live and how to survive, and there was a giant meal of thanks and so forth in Kumbaya.
Thanksgiving is actually explained in some textbooks as a holiday for which the pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians for saving their lives rather than what it was.
Thanksgiving was a devout expression of gratitude grounded in the tradition of both the old and new testaments.
Now here's the part of Thanksgiving that has been omitted from the storytelling in uh in the public school system and elsewhere.
The original contract that the pilgrims had entered into with their merchant sponsors in London called for everything they produced to go into a common store, and every member of the community was entitled to one common share.
All the land that they cleared and all the houses they built belonged to the community as well, not to them, not to individuals.
Now, Bradford, who had become the new governor of this colony, recognized that this form of collectivism was as costly and destructive to the pilgrims as that first harsh winter, which had taken so many lives.
So he changed everything up.
He decided to take bold action.
He assigned a plot of land to every family, and that family could work and manage that plot of land as they wished.
And in the process, Bradford turned loose the power of the marketplace.
Long before Karl Marx was even born, the pilgrims had discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism, a communal affair.
Everybody at one share, nobody owned anything, and they got one share in the common store, and they shared the results.
And what happened?
It didn't work.
What Bradford and his community found was that the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anybody else, because they'd all get an equal share of what was produced.
But when they were able to utilize the power of personal motivation, that's when things began to change.
While most of the rest of the world's been experimenting with socialism for well over a hundred years, trying to refine it, perfect it, reinvent it, the pilgrims decided early on to scrap it permanently.
What Bradford wrote about this social experiment ought to be in every school child's history lesson, because if it were, we might prevent much needless suffering in the future.
Let me read what he wrote.
The experience that was had in this common course and condition tried sundry years, that by taking away property and bringing community into a common wealth would make them happy and flourishing, as if they were wiser than God, he wrote.
For this community, so far as it was, was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort.
For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense?
That was thought injustice.
Why should I work for anybody else?
When all I'm getting is the same as everybody else is getting, and nobody else is working.
If somebody, some others are not working, why should I do this?
What he's saying here is that the pilgrims found that people could not be expected to do their best work without incentive, without self-interest.
So what did Bradford's community try next?
Well, they unharnish the power of good old free enterprise by invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private property.
Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work, and they were permitted to market its own crops and products.
Now, what was the result of this?
Well, let's listen to what the governor himself said, Mr. Bradford.
had very good success, for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.
Now, Bradford doesn't sound much like, I wrote Clinton, I think, doesn't sound like much of a liberal Democrat, does he?
Is it possible that supply-side economics could have existed before the 1980s?
Well, in fact, it did, if you read the story of Joseph and Pharaoh in Genesis 41, that Following Joseph's suggestion, Genesis 4134, Pharaoh reduced the tax on Egyptians to 20% during the seven years of plenty, and quote, the earth brought forth in heaps, Genesis 41.
In no time the pilgrims found that they had more food than they can eat themselves.
So what do they set up trading posts?
They exchanged goods with the Indians.
The prophets allowed them to pay off their debts to the merchants in London.
The success and prosperity of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what came to be known as the Great Puritan migration.
Now, other than on this program every year, have you heard this story before?
Is this lesson being taught to your kids today?
And if it isn't, why not?
Can you think of a more important lesson one could derive from the pilgrim experience?
So, in essence, there was thanks to the Indians, because they taught us how to skin beavers and how to plant corn when we arrived.
But the real thanksgiving was thanking the Lord for guidance and plenty.
And once they reformed their system and got rid of the communal uh uh bottle and started what was essentially free market capitalism, they had they produced more than they could possibly do, and they invited the Indians to dinner.
And voila, we got Thanksgiving.
And that's what it was.
And inviting the Indians to dinner and giving thanks for all the plenty is the true story of Thanksgiving.
And the last two-thirds of this story simply are not told.
And I was just talking about the plenty of this country, and how I'm awed by it.
You can go to places where there are famines, and we usually get the story.
Well, look at their deserts.
Well, I mean, look at it.
Uh Africa.
I mean, there's no water and nothing but sand and so forth.
It's not the answer, folks.
Of those people don't have a prayer because they have no incentive.
They they live under tyrannical dictatorships and uh and governments.
The uh the problem with um the world is not too few resources.
The problem with the world is an insufficient distribution of capitalism.
We'll be back.
Stay with us.
Yeah, it's a really frustrating story.
It's a great story, but it just I can't tell you how angry this makes me.
It's in the Washington Times today, but there it's in many places.
Rebuilding in Iraq tops 4,000 projects.
When and if the smoke ever clears in Iraq, Pentagon officials say the world finally will see a minor miracle.
Most Americans don't understand something equivalent to the Marshall Plan has been accomplished in Iraq, said Dean Pops, the principal assistant secretary of the Army for acquisitions, logistics, and technology.
The Army is the program manager for $20 billion in U.S. taxpayer money flowed to Iraq after the invasion to spur a building boom of more than 4,000 projects.
It's quite a heroic story, maligned often by the news media.
Mr. Pops said the Army Corps of Engineers has ferried reporters to what he considers successful sites in an effort to get a few positive stories on reconstruction, but rarely do any materialize.
And there's far more data in this story.
For example, you said accurately in your opening statement, I'm quoting somebody that not everything is uh is wrong in Iraq, and and that's true.
A fair reading of our full report demonstrably underscores that fact.
Indeed, 70% of the projects that we visited and 80% of the money allocated to them indicate these projects from a construction perspective have met what the contract anticipated.
Where was this before the election?
Where were people getting it?
Why in the world would you ferry a bunch of media people you know aren't going to report it?
Why would you take a bunch of mainstream drive-by media people over there and show them this when you know that they're not going to report it?
Now it comes out.
Joe in Tyler, Texas, uh, your next.
Hello, sir.
Uh God bless you, Rush.
Thanks for being a voice of reason and sanity in this uh media madness everywhere.
Thank you.
Hey, I'm really concerned about something.
I'm I'm a big fan of the free enterprise system, but uh I've got a friend who's was a pilot for Delta, and he retired a couple years ago.
And uh Delta recently just took away everybody's retirement.
Just said, oh, sorry, but we're not gonna pay you because we have financial troubles.
Uh wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute.
Did you're talking about pensions?
Yes.
Did they just they just they didn't they they they're there's didn't the government take those over?
No.
No, they did not.
Oh.
Okay, I'm gonna have to check this.
Because I didn't think that I didn't think they could just say, by the way, because you paid into it.
Right.
You've you've made some contributions to it.
I didn't think they could just say, okay, no more pensions for you.
Yours uh is effectively uh worthless.
Well, I think you'd be the one that might know something about this.
Well, there's uh there's a government agency, federal government agency that that uh exists to take over these pensions.
It was being discussed when General Motors wanted to get rid of some of theirs.
They're paying people that that I mean, they're paying people wages and salaries and health benefits who no longer work there in addition to their pensions.
And it's it's it's got even though they agreed to it, I mean, it's it's their responsibility, but uh the golden goose has uh been slain.
I mean, it it r the point of no return has been reached.
You can't pay unpredictable pe unproductive people uh in perpetuity and and survive.
I I'm gonna have to check that because I didn't think that they could just wipe it off the books.
Uh I mean, you say so, you would know more than I if you're if you're part of it.
I do know that that uh U.S. Air is looking to buy Delta for eight billion dollars.
I don't know what that would mean to this, if anything.
I don't know, and I would hope that if they did buy it, that they would say, okay, now we can honor this retirement.
But what really was a big slap in the face to all these pilots was the fact that you know, after they were told, well, sorry, you you know we can't pay your retirement, then they went ahead and gave themselves bonuses, you know, multimillion dollar bonuses to the CEO and the other people.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I know.
Well, you know, we've I've talked about this on occasion.
Some of you capitalism's not perfect, and uh uh with with with that kind of thing going on, uh the people involved deserve the criticism they get.
The system doesn't, but uh they do.
Uh I have to run here, Terry.
Thanks.
Uh sorry, Joe.
Back here in just a second, folks.
I was right.
There's a federal government agency is going to pick up the Delta pilot's pension.
Delta was allowed to terminate it, but the pensions are still there administered by the government.
May not be full value, but they're there.
Happy Thanksgiving, uh, everybody.
We'll see you on Monday.
Have a have a great next few days.
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