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Dec. 29, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:37
December 29, 2006, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
That is absolutely right.
This is Dr. Walter E. Williams sitting in for Rush on the last Friday of the year.
And I'm going to spend the last Friday of the year doing what I typically do, and that is pushing back the frontiers of ignorance and trying to sell my fellow American on the moral superiority of liberty and its major ingredient, limited government, as the founders of our great nation envisioned.
Now, since it's the last day of the year, we're going to have a modified Open Line Friday.
Now, what that means is, you know, I've been substituting for 14 years, and if there's anything that you want to take issue with me over these last 14 years and over my syndicated columns that are published nationally and internationally over the last 25 years, you can call in with your disagreement or your question.
And I invite not necessarily people who agree with me, but I invite liberals.
That is, people who think that the government should have more control over my life.
They should also call in.
And I'm going to ask my sharp call screener, Kit Carson, to just let these people in and come and talk to with me.
And I can show them where they are wrong and I am right.
Okay.
Now, there's one breaking news before we really get into the program.
And I guess just a few minutes ago, maybe an hour ago, the United States authorities turned over Saddam Hussein to the Iraqi authorities.
And according to the predictions, his hanging is imminent.
And so I have the televisions on, and so I'll keep you up to date as the show progresses.
But what I want to start off today, I want to talk about our late former president Ford.
And let me first say before we start, that I think that President Ford was a decent man, and he's worthy of our respect.
But there are a lot of things that are being said in the news media about President Ford's time during when he was president that I think just plain wrong.
One thing that they're saying is that his pardon of Richard Nixon healed the country.
Well, that's kind of questionable in my opinion.
First of all, we have to ask the question, who was for Nixon?
That is, it turned out that Goldwater, Senator Goldwater, headed a delegation to Nixon's office and told him that he had no support on his impeachment.
And he had no support anywhere in the United States.
Maybe a little tiny bit of support, but there was not 50% of Americans for Nixon and 50% of Americans against him.
And so I think that pardoning Nixon was a mistake.
And his other mistake, I think, was the appointment to the Supreme Court of John Paul Stevens.
And John Paul Stevens is a Supreme Court justice that I think, according to his opinions, have he appointed a person who has disrespect for the United States Constitution.
And just look over his decisions and you can see this.
Then another part of the Ford presidency, I'm not necessarily being critical of Ford, but we just want to look at some things in the past so that we can better gauge the future or know what to prepare ourselves for future events.
Remember during the 1970s, there was a lot of inflation.
And the Ford administration, they started inflation campaigns, such as whip inflation now.
That is, you wear these win buttons.
And then plant a vegetable garden.
That would help with inflation.
And then turn down your thermostats.
That would cut the demand for fuel and help restrain price increases.
And matter of fact, I don't think it was during the Ford administration, but I think during the Carter administration, they were even suggesting sending Boy Scouts to people's houses to see whether they had their thermostat set on 68.
Now, I commented during the time, and I can't quite say on this show what I actually said to the person who asked me about this Boy Scout business, but I told him what I would do to a Boy Scout who came to my house wanting to check my thermostat.
He would be in bad shape.
But let's think about inflation.
Inflation is not caused by rapacious businessmen or greedy unions or oil prices.
Ladies and gentlemen, inflation everywhere is a monetary phenomenon.
That is, there's an increase in supply of money.
And who is in charge of increasing the supply of money?
It's the government.
And so what we need to do to handle inflation, we need to have a sensible monetary policy.
Now, you can kind of think about, let me give you an example or a little experiment that you can do to check inflation.
A lot of people have a monopoly game and there's a fixed amount of money in the monopoly game.
Now imagine somebody charges, oh, I don't know, $20,000 or let's say $5,000 for a boardwalk.
Well, boardwalk prices will go up, but not every single price.
That is, if boardwalk prices go up, other prices will have to go down.
Now, inflation is defined as a general increase in prices.
That is, all prices rise together, as we saw during the 70s, as we see during any inflation.
Now, here's a little trick to get all prices rising in your monopoly game.
That is, the next time you go over to somebody's house to play Monopoly, sneak your money into the game.
That is, take the money from your game and sneak it into the game.
And then you will see all prices rising.
But if you have a fixed amount of money, you're never going to see all prices rising.
Another thing that happened perhaps towards the end of the Ford administration and the beginning of the Carter administration, we had something called stagflation.
That is, we had the combination of prices rising, and we also had the combination of rising unemployment.
And economists, Keynesian economists, had been talking about this so-called Phillips curve.
And they said, well, there's a trade-off between inflation and unemployment.
That is, as inflation goes up, unemployment goes down.
Or as if you try to lower inflation, unemployment will rise.
Well, that theory was thoroughly discredited during the 1970s.
And matter of fact, much of the Keynesian, Sir Maynard Keynes, the famous economist that produced a work during the 30s and 40s commenting on the general theory of employment.
I forget the full title.
They typically call it the general theory.
But anyway, that was thoroughly discredited during the 1970s.
Anyway, so let's keep in mind, before you people call and saying, well, I'm speaking ill of the dead, I'm not speaking ill of the dead.
I'm saying that Ford, President Ford, was a decent man.
He was a respectable man, and he's worthy of our respect.
But I'm just kind of pointing out some things that were said in news media that are absolutely false and you should not pay attention to.
And I also point out that his Supreme Court appointment, John Paul Stevens, I think was a disastrous choice, and Americans are paying for it today, and we're going to continue to pay for it.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
We're back, Walter Williams, sitting in for the vacation rush.
And Rush will be back on Wednesday, and Roger Hedgecock will be in on Tuesday.
And you can be on by calling 1-800-282-2882.
Let's go to the phones right now, and let's take a call from Robert.
Robert from Santa Rosa, California.
Welcome to the show, Robert.
Yeah, hello, Dr. Williams.
Thank you for taking my call.
Unfortunately, I have a bone to pick with you, sir.
Bottom line is, I took your advice in regards to gift giving for my wife, and she hasn't spoken to me since Christmas.
What happened?
Well, you know, I remember you saying once before when you subbed for Rush how you had bought your wife a pair of golf shoes so she wouldn't slip and hurt herself while she washed your car.
Yeah.
Well, I took that advice.
I went out.
I got the best pair of golf shoes money could buy.
And my wife, she's just angry.
And she hasn't washed my car since either.
That's very unappreciative of your lady.
Well, it sure is.
And let me give the audience some background on this.
This is a number of years ago.
It was around Christmas time.
And somebody called in and said, well, Professor Williams, what did you get Mrs. Williams for Christmas?
And so I told her, I got a set of golf shoes.
She doesn't play golf, but the golf shoes have cleats on it, and so she doesn't slide around in the winter once she's washing my car.
And then I had another gift.
Matter of fact, Mrs. Williams had a very short duration in the hospital a couple years ago.
And her doctor told her that she shouldn't be lifting heavy things.
I got her, and I always wrap my gifts very nicely.
I got her a little tiny shovel that doesn't hold much snow at a time when, so when she's shoveling my driveway, she's not lifting up a whole lot of snow.
And these have been very innovative gifts on my behalf.
And matter of fact, and those of you who think I oppress Mrs. Williams, we've been married 47 years, so evidently she's very grateful of my company.
But since people have been critical, they're saying, well, Williams, Professor Williams, you always give Mrs. Williams self-serving gifts.
That is, gifts that help you.
And so this year I've been a little bit different.
I've been a little more caring.
And so I looked around.
And matter of fact, here's what I suggested, guys.
I said, look around the house and look for what you're going to have to buy anyway and get that for the gift.
So this year I got her some lipstick.
I got her some deodorant.
And I got her actually a half dozen of stockings and bobby pins.
And I wrapped them all very nicely.
And I presented her on Christmas Day.
And she just looked at me kind of a certain way, you know, very lovingly, though.
I interpreted the glance very lovingly.
And then there's one final improvement.
Now, you guys might really think about this because Mrs. Williams and I, we are in our 70s, and we only have 30 or 40 more years to live anyway.
And so you've got to start preparing for one's own death and what you're going to do.
And so I have an estate plan whereby the instructions of my estate plan, not to bury me or to cremate me, is that the instructions are that Mrs. Williams have to take me to a taxidermis and have me stuffed.
And the fellow who will hand out the money, my executor, will just kind of go by the house and see whether I'm sitting at the kitchen table or see whether I'm sitting in front of the television and then give Mrs. Williams the money.
But I just don't want to leave this earth.
And so those are the instructions for Mrs. Williams on my demise.
But let's go to Frank in Troy, New York.
He wants to talk about the Nixon pardon.
Welcome to the show, Frank.
Yes, good afternoon, Dr. Williams.
Pleasure to talk to you.
And I would never have thought you were in your 70s if you didn't say so.
Oh, well, you know, the average person, actually, you can go to my website as walterewilliams.com, and I have a very, very handsome picture that the lady's all thrilled with.
And the average person would guess me, kid, what would you say?
About 41, 45?
Well, I'm 41.
I'll say 51 just to be safe.
Okay, okay, right.
But what's your comment or observation?
Right.
Well, my thought, I get I was eight years old when the Ford presidency began, and I didn't even know about a presidential pardon at the time.
So my research on that all came later on in life, and my thoughts on it were, and again, I don't have a problem with your take on it, just want to present an argument of my own on the other side is that the act of pardoning got Congress and the country away from something that was bogging it down and enabled to go on to bigger and better things.
Well, I think that it's good for the country to have Congress bogged down.
That is, they can do fewer harmful things to the nation if they're bogged down, by the way.
I won't argue that either.
No, you're right with that.
Although I will say that by the time it came around for Carter, it was definitely time to come along.
Now, when Carter's term ended, or when Reagan was close to being elected, I remember getting materials handed in school that was along that, you know, if we're not careful, Carter might be just a one-term president like Millard Fillmore.
And they were trying to indoctrinate us back then, even in school, about that.
Well, those are some additional thoughts.
But thank you for your call.
Let's go to Geneseo.
Am I pronouncing your name correctly?
No, Genesio.
Genesio.
He's from Ontario, Canada.
Yeah, it's an Italian name.
My dad, he went to pick up Time magazine, and then he picked up the Bible, and he looked in the Bible and said, Genesis, and he said Genesio.
Okay.
Yeah, I'm just calling like in Canada we have Medicare, and I think it's a good thing because when my dad 10 years ago had surgery, the bill was $126,000 because of paid through the tax system.
It didn't put my dad into jeopardy or whatever, because we collectively, as a society, pay, like, you know, insurance, you pull money kind of thing.
And I'm thinking...
You think it's a good system?
Universal health care was started by Thomas C. Douglas in Saskatchewan in 1944.
His grandson is Kiefer Sutherland.
Well, let me run a few questions by because I think the audience might be interested in some of the issues in Canada's single-payer system.
There's the Fraser Institute in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Each year they publish a waiting list, how long Canadians have to wait for various kinds of surgery.
And I'm looking at the waiting list right now.
It's on their site.
It's the Fraser Institute.
And it turns out that the average waiting time in Canada for a hip replacement surgery is 54 weeks.
And matter of fact, because people in Canada wait so long for hip replacement, Cleveland, Ohio is Canada's hip replacement center.
That is, people come from Canada to Cleveland.
And let me just give a couple more.
There's for cornea transplant, you have to wait 42 weeks.
For cardiac surgery, you don't have to wait that long.
It's only eight weeks you have to wait.
And this is the waiting times from going from a specialist to the actual surgery.
And so there are huge waiting times.
Matter of fact, in Canada, a lot of people die while they're waiting for a particular procedure.
And by the way, so far as brain surgery is concerned, you people should check on my website, walterewilliams.com, and click on, I believe it's titled Canadian Brain Surgery.
It's the first on the list underneath there.
And you'll see that, in my opinion, that Americans are not going to want anything to do with a health system like Canada has.
But they might right now because they think it's good.
They see it as a free thing.
They see it as a great thing.
But once we have it, and once people have to, women have to wait three months for a pap smear or two months for a pap smear, they're not going to like it.
And we'll be back with more of your calls after this.
This is Walter E. Williams pushing back the frontiers of ignorance during Russia's absence.
There's something else in the news today, and it had to do with a column that was published in New York Times by an economist from Princeton University, Paul Krugman.
And the gist of the column is that, matter of fact, the title of the column is called A Failed Revolution.
And Krugman is talking about the Republican failure since Republicans have been in office since well held the power in Washington since 1994.
And he talks about the Republicans' failure to cut back government.
Now, is it really a failure, regardless of who's in, whether it's Democrats or Republicans, to cut back government?
I don't know.
That is, can you blame, can we reasonably ask the politician to do what he considers to be political suicide?
That is, to end various handout programs.
Now, I blame politicians just a little bit by not providing us leadership, but the bulk of the blame, ladies and gentlemen, lies with you and me, the American people, because politicians are doing precisely what we elect them to office to do.
And what do we elect them to office to do?
Think about this for a moment.
We elect them to office to use the power of their office to take the rightful property of one American and bring it back to us.
That is, we elect them to office to engage in legalized theft.
Now, you say, what do you mean by this, Walter?
Well, first of all, we have to recognize that government has no resources of its very own.
Secondly, we have to recognize that there's no tooth theory or Santa Claus that gives them the money that supports these various programs that we want.
Now, when you recognize that government has no resource of its very own, that forces you to recognize that the only way the government can give one American citizen $1 is to first, through intimidation, threats, and coercion, confiscate that dollar from some other American.
That is, I believe Americans love government.
Why?
They love government because government allows us to do things and to realize things that if we did the same thing privately, we'd be sent to jail.
Now, let me give you an example there.
I could see an elderly lady sleeping on the grate in the dead of winter in downtown New York.
This lady needs some medical attention, she needs some food, and she needs some shelter.
Now, I could walk up to any one of you with a gun in my hand and say, give me your $200.
Then having gotten your $200, I could go down and buy the lady some medical attention, get her some shelter, and buy her some food.
Now, would anybody in the audience see me as guilty of a crime?
I think you would.
You'd be guilty.
You'd see that I'm guilty of theft regardless of what I did with the money.
Because what is theft?
Theft is taking the rightful property of one person and giving it to another to whom it does not belong.
Now, I think most of you can agree with me.
No question.
Now, here's the problem.
Is there any distinction between that act and when the agents of the United States Congress comes up to me and says, Williams, you know that $200 you made last week that you had planned to buy a nice bottle of Chateau de Chem Sauterne wine?
You will not use the money for that purpose.
You'll give it to us, and we will help the lady sleeping on the grate.
Well, what's the difference between those two acts?
Both acts involved taking the rightful property of one person and giving it to another to whom it does not belong.
And if you press me for a distinction between the two acts, the only difference I can find is the first act was illegal theft and the second is legalized theft.
Now, so here's the big problem.
Now, if I went downtown and if I took somebody else's money to help that lady out, then I'd be sent to jail.
But however, if I got Congress to legislate and take somebody's money, I'm seen as compassionate to help the person.
Oh, Williams is so caring.
I'd be in the news and everything.
Oh, Williams is just a wonderful guy.
So that's what I mean when I say people love government.
Many Americans love government because it enables them to achieve things that if they did privately, they'd be sent to jail.
But doing it through government, they're seen as compassionate.
Now, don't confuse me, ladies and gentlemen.
I believe in helping our fellow man.
I believe that reaching into one's own pockets to help one's fellow man is praiseworthy and laudable.
Reaching into somebody else's pocket to help your fellow man, I think is despicable.
Now, I know many of you people out there are Christians.
And Christians ought to be upset with this because when God gave Moses the commandment, thou shalt not steal, I'm sure that God didn't mean thou shalt not steal unless you got a majority vote in Congress.
I'm very sure about that.
Then also, it's not in the commandment, but if you were to ask God, well, you say, God, is it okay to be a recipient of stolen property?
What do you think he would say?
I think he would say that is a sin as well.
But see, here's the problem, ladies and gentlemen.
Here's the big problem, and which is the supreme tragedy for our nation, and it's going to lead to our undoing, is that so far as personal interests are concerned, it pays Americans to do what they've been doing.
I mean, imagine, imagine that, let's say you're in North Carolina.
I live in North Carolina.
And say I'm running for the United States Senate.
And during my campaign, I go back and forth across the state and I say, look, I've read the United States Constitution.
When I take an oath of office to uphold and defend the United States Constitution, I mean it if you elect me to the Senate.
I'm going to obey the Constitution.
There is nothing in the Constitution that enables me to bring back funds to North Carolina for highway construction, handouts to farmers, meals on wheels, aid to higher education.
Do you think I would get elected to the Senate from North Carolina?
No, I wouldn't.
Because North Carolinians, they would be acting in their self-interest not to elect me to the Senate.
Because if I don't bring back billions of dollars to North Carolinians, it doesn't mean that North Carolinians will pay a lower federal income tax.
All that it means is that the money will go instead to South Carolina.
So, when Congress establishes the rule that one American can live at the expense of another American, then it pays for all Americans to try to live at the expense of each other.
Or another way of putting it, once legalized theft begins, it pays for everybody to get involved.
Those who don't get involved wind up holding the brown end of the stick.
And for those of you with a rural background, you know what I mean.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
This is Walter Williams back with you, Pushing Back the Frontiers of Ignorance.
And let's go to the phones.
John in Orlando, Florida, welcome to the show, John.
Yes, Dr. Williams, it's an honor to talk to one of the greatest minds in American history, in my opinion.
Well, thank you.
But seeing that the lifespan of most democracies in history have been about 200 years, and the picture you just painted before is basically, in my opinion, where we're headed, I want to ask you about two things that possibly could extend our lifespan, if you will.
One being the fair tax, and the second being if we limited who could vote, meaning if you're on a government assistance, you lose your right to vote until you are no longer receiving that assistance.
In your opinion, what do you think about those two things possibly extending our march towards socialism?
Well, that's a hard question.
Now, just let me brief the audience on Congressman Representative Linder's idea on the fair tax.
He proposes, at least according to the book I read, that he and Neil Bortz in Atlanta, Georgia, I believe, they're calling for a sales tax on all of our purchases.
I think it'll be around 23%, which they say is revenue neutral.
It will generate the same revenue as the current income tax code and elimination of all other federal taxes.
And clearly, I would say that some taxes are worse than other taxes.
Matter of fact, the income tax is an abomination.
And just one form of the abomination is that in terms of just complying with the income tax code, and forget about the amount of money that you send in, it takes billions of hours.
Matter of fact, the estimate is it takes 5.8 billion hours of record keeping, filing taxes, consulting with legal and accounting.
And it turns out that breaking these hours down to a 40-hour week, it translates into a workforce of about 2.77 million people.
And that's more than the workforce of our automobile, aircraft, and computer and steel manufacturing industries.
That is, we're kind of throwing all that into the drink because of this very cumbersome income tax code.
Yeah, I think Bortz, too, they said that the compliance cost is around $500 billion a year.
Yeah, I'm not absolutely, I don't really recall the figure, but you could absolutely be right.
Now, but there's an issue.
I have some reservations about the fair tax, and this is my reservation.
That is, I think that I would only support the fair tax if we first repeal the 16th Amendment creating the income tax.
Because I guarantee you, if we don't do that and we have a fair tax, well, and we legislate a pass a fair tax, it's going to mean that we're going to have a national sales tax plus an income tax.
And so what we have to do, we have to repeal the 16th Amendment.
But I wrote a column on this several weeks ago, and I think that the American people, we have to be concerned with one thing so far as this, our relationship with government.
That is, the true measure of the effect of government on our lives is not how much government taxes us, but how much government spends.
Spending is what we should look at.
And in 18, from 18, I'm sorry, from 1787, the inception of our nation, to 1920, the federal government was only 3% of the GNP except during wartime.
Today, the federal government is over 20% of the GNP.
Now, if the federal government is only 3% of the GNP, then any kind of tax system is okay.
It's not going to be burdensome.
But if government spending rises to 20, 30%, 50%, 60% of the GNP, well, then no kind of tax system is going to be helpful to us because we have to keep in mind that the true measure of our relationship with the federal government is federal spending.
For example, the federal government does not have to tax us at all in order to get resources.
That is, the federal government can just print money.
Of course, if it just printed money to fund its activities, there'd be a rampant inflation.
But the point, ladies and gentlemen, that they don't have to tax us at all.
They can either print money, inflate the currency, because that's what inflation is.
It's a sneaky form of taxation.
Or they can just run deficits by going into the bond market or the borrowing market and driving up interest rates.
See, you have to keep in mind, in order for government to spend out of our GNP, which is around $13 trillion, if the government wants to spend two or three trillion dollars of that GNP that we produce this year, it has to somehow get us not to spend two or three trillion dollars.
One way to get us not to spend is to tax us.
But another way is to inflate the currency, because if prices go up, we can buy less.
Or another way is to force us not to spend is to enter the bond market and bid up interest rates.
And so that means we can do less investment, less buying houses, cars, et cetera, et cetera.
So, ladies and gentlemen, the key thing is for us to pay attention to government spending.
And matter of fact, if government obeyed the United States Constitution, if our Our senators and our Congress representatives obeyed the United States Constitution, the federal budget would be roughly one-third of what it is today.
We'll be back with more of your calls after this.
We're at the end of the first hour, and we can take one more call from Brian in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Welcome to the show, Brian.
Hi, Walter.
I have a question regarding the use of the military with a tight monetary policy, as you described earlier in your show.
I'm in total agreement with you regarding inflation and how big the government should be, but it occurred to me that it might be difficult to fight wars like Iraq and just in general to have our military gallivanting all over the world if we had such a tight monetary policy.
And GNP, as you described, or federal spending as you described, is just 3% of GNP.
And I was wondering what your thoughts were on that.
Well, we fought a number of wars when the federal spending was just 3% of the GNP.
And matter of fact, as I said in my statement, I said that we went from 1787 to 1920, except during wartime.
The federal government only spent 3% of the GNP.
But, however, the federal government can wage a war if we cut spending.
I mean, we did not have all the kind of spending that we have now, and we fought World War I, and that was one.
Would you agree, though, that it might be a different question to Americans if the president had to come to the nation and say, we're going to go to Iraq for however long we're going to go, and it's going to cost a trillion dollars or whatever, and Americans are going to feel it in their pocketbook rather than just print more money or borrow more money?
That is absolutely right.
That is, when the cost of war is truly revealed, and the one way that we conceal the cost of war is through inflating the currency, and as I wrote in a column for this week, having the military draft that understates the true cost of war.
So, if we get back to the way that the Constitution dictates how our country should be run, we'll be much better off, and our children would be much better off, too.
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