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July 4, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:09
July 4, 2007, Wednesday, Hour #3
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And we're back.
Great to have you with us as the EIB Network's daily presentation of the Rush Limbaugh program continues the third hour of the fastest three hours in media.
It's a sheer delight to be with you each and every day, folks, to discuss, although I won't be here tomorrow.
Back Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday from New York in the EIB building, our headquarters there.
But it's a sheer delight to be able to appear with you each and every day.
I can't tell you how much I, even now, after we're getting close, 19 years, the 1st of August, I still appreciate it.
Snerdley was talking to me during the break.
He said, why would anybody buy Chrysler?
You know, Daimler-Benz, Daimler-Chrysler's getting rid of Mercedes getting rid of Chrysler.
And a private investment company bought them.
And Snerdley said, why?
You got all those union contracts, the legacy, the healthcare, why would anybody buy them?
I couldn't tell you.
Obviously, they're buying them because they think they're going to make money doing it.
One way or the other, either going to flip it down the road or they're going to make money operating it.
Now, the name of the company, I bet you don't know this, Snerdley.
The name of the company, the private investment company that bought Chrysler is named Cerebrus or Cerebrus.
I'm not sure how they pronounce it.
But do you know who their chairman is?
The name Jon Snow Wingabel.
John Snow, the former Treasury Secretary, he succeeded in business.
He couldn't succeed in monkey business, which is the government.
He didn't do well.
But he was Secretary of the Treasury for a while.
I think he also, he was a member of Augusta National Golf Club and resigned during the Martha Burke business after he got the nomination for the Treasury post.
He resigned.
They were raising hell about no female members and so forth.
Now, another thing, I've got my audio soundbite roster here, and this is sort of a, it's sort of a strange Monday.
But yeah, I've got all kinds of soundbites.
In fact, I've got 20 of them.
But can I tell you who they are?
I got Oprah, which I played the two Oprah bites.
We got McCain.
We got Mitch McConnell.
We got this idiot interview last night that Mike Wallace did with Mitt Romney.
Can you tell me, you ever had sex with your wife before marriage?
What do you ask that question to Obama?
I already talked about that last week, though.
They put a press release out.
So we talk Friday.
We've got Obama here, three bites.
Already talked about Obama.
You know, Stephanopoulos gave him a mulligan on the question of what would you do if we were at the, you know what, Grab Cut 13.
This might be an interesting one to listen to.
But the point is, it's just the same old SAMO.
It's the same old people as Chuck Hagel.
We got Chuck Hagels out.
Chuck Hagel's ripping the Republicans.
What's new?
I'm not complaining about the fact that that's all I've got.
That's not the point.
That's what there is.
But frankly, Chuck Hagel doesn't interest me like he does the drive-by media.
And I can say more about Obama than he can say himself and make it interesting.
What's interesting about this Obama bite is with Stephanopoulos yesterday, the question, one moment that got a lot of scrutiny was at the debate.
You were asked what you would do if al-Qaeda attacked two American cities.
And what you didn't say in your first answer is that you would strike back.
And a lot of your rivals said, well, it shows that his instincts are soft.
I construe this as a mulligan.
Stephanopoulos is basically saying, go ahead and answer it again.
Get it right this time.
If a Republican had made this kind of gaffe, the question would be about the gaffe.
Where was your head?
What were you thinking?
How in the world do you ever expect the American people to vote for you if you can't even say that you would retaliate against people that nuked two city?
No, that's not the question.
Very soft soap, very, very, very dignified and so forth.
And here's Obama's answer here as he takes another swing at it.
I will repeat what I said, which is that the first thing I would do is make sure that the emergency response was appropriate and the people were safe.
The second thing I'd do is make sure that we weren't going to have another attack and that we had adequate intelligence to make sure that that was prevented.
The third thing I would do is to find out who had perpetrated the crime, and then I would attack.
Now, that, I think, is how every American should want their president to operate.
Stop the tape a second.
Stop the tape.
I mean, see, what's wrong with this is that Brian Williams in the question left no, let there be no doubt about it was al-Qaeda.
He didn't need any intelligence.
He didn't need to talk to anybody else around the world.
This emergency response of the first responders, that's my God.
If the president has to make sure that's happening, we are in deep doo-doo.
If the local communities in these cities that were theoretically nuked have to wait for Obama as president or anybody else to call, hey, you guys in gear out there, the ambulance is rolling.
But presidents can do two or three things at a time here.
The first answer is find out who did an attack.
But Brian Williams in the question said, and it is without a doubt al-Qaeda has done the attack.
They've nuked two cities.
While we're here in South Carolina at this debate, they have nuked two cities.
So you don't have to worry about making sure the intelligence is right.
So, I mean, Stephanopoulos is still letting him off the hook here.
Then, this is an interesting bite.
Sam Donaldson was back on Stephanopoulos' show yesterday in a roundtable, and they were discussing Stephanopoulos' interview with Obama.
And this is one of the things that Donaldson said.
I was watching your interview, and I must tell you, George, the first half was intensely interested in it, and I began to get on to the way he was answering.
And the second half, if you will look at that interview again, one of those shots when he was talking to a crowd, you were illustrating how he was.
Look at the guy in the lower right hand.
He was asleep.
I'm serious.
Yeah, I would be too.
I mean, this is this raucous crowd we told you about earlier.
1,500 people in Kansas City turned out to hear a Barack Obama.
1,500 people for a presidential candidate is Zilch.
And they drudge headed pictures on his website.
I don't know if they're still up there or not, but they were there of these two people.
There were two people who were asleep.
Now, would anybody have any problem disagreeing with me if I said those two people might not have even been Obama supporters?
What if they're from the Hillary camp, the Clinton camp?
What if Clinton supporters in Kansas City wormed their way into the Obama appearance and got up there in the front row and fell asleep or made it look like they're falling asleep knowing that their pictures would be taken?
Well, I have people talking to me all the time in the IFB.
HR said, you could be wrong about this rush.
They just could have been guys dragged there by their wives that didn't want to go and they fell asleep.
In fact, you know what?
That main idea, we got to consider that because I got an email from a guy who had to go, where was it?
Madeline Albright did a commencement address recently at some major university.
I want to say North Carolina.
Forgive me if I'm wrong about that.
But this guy sent me the email saying, I had no desire.
My daughter was graduating, so I had to go, but I had no desire to listen to Madeline Albright.
I took an iPod and listened to your show from Friday while Madeline Albright was doing the commencement speech.
And he was just writing to thank me for making podcasts available.
Anyway, I still vote for the fact that they were Clinton supporters that wormed their wear in there and fell asleep on purpose knowing, or made it look like they'd fallen asleep, so that people like Sam Donaldson would notice it.
Back in a sec.
You've got to be kidding me.
Snerdly says he's being overrun today with calls from people who are talking about the gasoline purchase boycott tomorrow and wondering why I'm not talking about it and advocating for it.
Well, let me answer that.
I have heard about it.
I've been getting emails from people telling me and asking me that it'd be a good thing to join.
They said that the last time this was done, that big oil suffered a huge drop in sales and lowered the prices immediately after this happened, which I find difficult to believe.
I don't believe, I don't remember any of that.
But the problem, folks, I mean, I couldn't honestly do it.
I've got to be honest with you.
I'm flying to Pittsburgh tomorrow and I'm going to be buying, I don't know how many thousands of gallons of jet fuel.
I mean, I have no choice.
So if I were to encourage, I mean, jet fuel is not gasoline, but it's still big oil that sells it.
You know, jet A is basically kerosene-based.
It's not gasoline.
And if I need to fill the car tomorrow morning to get to the airport, I'm going to do that because I have to be at the airport.
Or if I needed to fill a car to get home from the airport, if I don't have time to fill it before I go to the airport, then I'm going to do that.
Folks, I don't believe in boycotts.
I never have believed in boycotts.
I've been boycotted.
Well, they've attempted to boycott me.
And I think it's cheap and it's largely theatrical.
And it just, it isn't me.
As a turtle said in 1965, it ain't me, babe.
Boycotts just aren't me.
If you want to join the boycott, I mean, go right ahead.
If it'll make you feel better, and I think that's what it's about.
But a one-day boycott of gasoline, even if gazillions of Americans actually participate in it, is not going to bring down the price of gasoline.
Look at, I mentioned this earlier, and this is, let me find it in my stack here because I captured the picture.
It says it all.
There was a picture over the weekend.
Here I am holding it right here, my formerly nicotine-stained fingers.
A picture of two gas stations around the corner from each other, the price boards, the signboards that have the price.
These two gas stations are around a corner from each other in San Francisco.
And one of them is a shell station, and the high price is $453.
The low price is diesel, $350.
I forget diesel.
The lowest price of gasoline, $433.
The highest is $453.
It's a shell station.
And then the highest price on the competing stations boards, $387.
The lowest price is $375.
So basically, they got a station in San Francisco shell station selling gas 80% or 80 cents higher, 75 to 80 cents higher than a competing station across the street.
And here is a caption.
High gas prices are posted at a shell station right with a chevron gas station prices posted at left in San Francisco.
Thursday, May 10th, 2007.
With gasoline prices poised to break records at the pump.
Energy futures prices jump Thursday as traders noticed a gas supply imbalance in the fine print of Wednesday.
Well, now, what's left out of that, and these idiots at AP may not even know it because it was a local San Francisco story.
I shared it with you on Friday or Thursday of last week.
Guy who owns the Shell station is Fit to be.
Was it called by Cw, Nevius or Nevius i'm not sure how he pronounces his name of the SAN Francisco Chronicle.
And this guy owns a little oil company in the Bay area and he has this station and he's just mad as hell at Shell and so he has raised the price on purpose.
He's losing the station at the end of the month.
Or he's giving it up or they're taking it back.
I think they're going to close it.
They're going to bulldoze it and turn it into a, you know a landfill with uh, the former plastic bags they used to give out at the grocery stores.
They're going to, you know, remnants from the addictomy surgeries they have or whatever they're going to put in the landfill.
They're going to get rid of the guy's gas station.
So he says, what the hell have I got to lose?
So he's charging 453 per gallon.
It's not a legitimate price.
He's raised it on purpose to get attention, so that he can show attention to uh, the unfair business practices he thinks that Shell OIL is engaging in.
These are not prices that are dictated by the market.
He's doing this on purpose.
Nowhere in this caption or the story accompanying the picture is that explained that those, those prices of 453 and 433 are presented by the AP as genuine.
So if you got taken in by this, if you didn't know the local story, you think that gasoline in San Francisco is now up to 453 a gallon.
And it's not.
It is, but nobody's buying it, because you can go down the street around the corner, get it for 387 still not four bucks at this particular location.
It may be in certain pockets out there.
But as for the boycott, uh folks, let me give you an analogy.
I look at boycotts the same way I looked at the Perot Candidacy.
I think you get hooked into them.
I think you some of you, i'm sure believe in them.
That think think that they work and that they are a way that you can demonstrate, uh power and this sort of thing.
Gasoline is one of these things that you may boycott it for a day, but you're going to need to break your own boycott at some point when you're not going to have any choice in the matter.
Uh, and big oil is not going to be a frightened of the boycott because they know that you're not going to be able to boycott it forever or for a protracted length of time.
So, but if, if this is something you feel you have to do to demonstrate your anger and your rage uh, by all means feel free.
This is Ray in Um Venice, Mississippi.
Hi Ray, nice to have you on the program.
Hey, I have waited years to talk to you.
My 18 year old son turned me on to you listening to you, and he's now 33, so that's how long it's been.
Well, i'm glad to have you on the program today, Ray.
Thank you, I was comparing, ray.
Are you?
Are you trying to sound seductive on purpose, or are you tired?
No well, I am tired.
We hosted an open house this past saturday for our 45th wedding anniversary and well, y'all my condolences.
I'm married to a wonderful Christian man and we have five sons who are wonderful sons, and they've never i've never had any trouble out of any of, No smoking, drinking, ring.
Anyway, what was coming about?
Oh.
Oprah.
You know what I mean?
Oprah.
When you were talking to Oprah, she was talking about, she was talking about piggy cotton or something.
I don't know.
And I was wondering.
No, well, I didn't play the bite.
Earlier in the speech, she was in a commencement speech, she was talking about picking cotton and so forth.
And my point was that the kids that are in this graduating class are likely born around 87, 86, and have never been to the cotton field.
Her basic point was that she said, well, let me get the bite.
You don't paraphrase the Oprah.
You play the Oprah.
So that's audio soundbites two and three out there.
And stand by here, Ray, and listen to these again.
And those of you that missed it, this is what Ray's talking about.
Here's the first of the two bites.
Because my grandmother was a maid and she worked for white folks her whole life.
And her idea of having a big dream was to have white folks who at least treated her with some dignity, who showed her a little bit of respect.
And she used to say, I want you to, I hope you get some good white folks that are kind to you.
And I regret that she didn't live past 1963 to see that I did grow up and get some really good white folks working for me.
The Oprah, ladies and gentlemen.
The Oprah at Howard University's graduation.
And first time we played this, Snurdley said, Don't be too hard on her.
She's commenting on the progress that's been made.
It's a good thing, Rush.
Okay, well, let's listen to this next one.
This is in last September on Oprah's XM radio show.
Hope you get some good white folks like I did because I work for some good white folks.
They're so nice to me.
They give you clothes and clothes, and you get food to take home.
They give you good clothes, too.
Not all worn out.
I did grow up to get some good white folks working for you.
Working for you.
Working for me.
Look around here.
These good white folks.
There's white people everywhere.
Everywhere.
One black man.
There's one everywhere you look.
There's George, more white folks thumbing up.
You know, George is giving the thumbs up.
I'm a good white folk.
If anybody needs to be apologizing to their audience for a lousy show, it would be the Oprah.
And Gail King was her guest there, her best bud.
They were talking about.
Now, I would say to the Oprah, you know, nobody likes being talked about this way.
Black folk, white folk, Mexican folk.
Nobody likes being talked about this way.
But the Oprah is royalty and is immune and above criticism.
Now, what was the point you wanted to make about this, Ray, having heard it?
Well, I was one of us, for one thing, I've grown up in Mississippi, except for the few years I lived in Virginia.
And everything was, I mean, we had good relations with the blacks that we used.
And we never had any working for us.
In fact, we picked our own cotton.
And most of my friends picked cotton.
Wait, you?
You picked cotton?
Yes, sir.
I sure picked it up.
My grandfather picked cotton.
My grandfather on my mother's side ran a compress down in Kennett, Missouri.
Oh.
Well, we got to.
They get big in the cotton, big in the cotton business.
I have roots to the cotton fields.
Our big thrill every year was getting to go to the gym with the first bale of cotton.
And we picked cotton to have clothes to wear.
We also host cotton.
That's right.
It's natural fiber.
It's a natural fiber.
My first job in Sacramento, first job, I wore a sweater.
When I got the first day, I wore a sweater without a, and I had on some Sandsabilt pants.
I don't know what it was, but just the sweater, no shirt underneath.
Program director called me as unacceptable attire, sir.
We wear natural fibers at KFBK.
Never forget that.
I said, natural fibers don't stretch.
Have you looked at me?
But anyway, Ray's point is that there are poor white people out there and that Oprah is somehow missing this.
What am I watching here?
See a headline on Fox: Lawmakers Live on $3 a day for food.
This is like a gas boycott.
There is no gas boycott, but I think you people sending me emails and calling us about this gas boycott.
There isn't one.
There was a myth that there ever was a gas boycott that had ever lowered prices.
This is Economics 101.
If you don't buy gas, you're still going to be using it.
You're still driving around.
You're still going to be, you're going to have to buy it someday.
This is absurd.
I'm surprised how many of you people are caught up in this.
It's as big a hoax as global warming is.
It's like your four-year-old who says, okay, I'm boycotting air, holds his breath for as long as he can before he has to open it or die.
It's just, it's, it's.
And now we got lawmakers living on three.
Where is this?
Lawmakers living on $3.
This reminds me of when Martin Sheen and the boys went to Washington back when Mitch Schneider had his creative Center for Nonviolence as a homeless shelter.
And they went in the cold of night one day and they kicked all these homeless people off sewer grates where they slept because of the warmth to illustrate the plight of the homeless.
And all they did was cause the homeless to freeze to death.
It's the governor of Oregon doing this, and other lawmakers are joining in.
Pretending he's living on a food stamp.
Yeah, there it is, Governor Ted Kulangaski.
Democrat, is there any doubt Oregon going to illustrate the plight of food stamp recipients by living on $3 a day for food?
Where to start with that?
How inane?
It's going to accomplish nothing and it misses the point, and that is showing people who live on food stamps how they shouldn't and don't have to anymore by inspiring them to do otherwise.
Bottom, well, I don't think he's going to be on it long enough to gain weight.
You look at a lot of food stamp recipients do have a weight problem.
Governor Kulangoski of Oregon may end up if he stays on this $3 a day food budget long enough, may end up gaining some weight like some of the food stamp people.
But this is absurd anyway.
The Department of Agriculture out there advertising for more food stamp applicants.
They want people to come up and sign up.
Clients, it's not a bad deal, food stamps.
Three bucks a day?
Give me a break.
Sorry for the distraction, folks.
I see these things running by and I can't hear them because it's obviously I'm hosting a big radio show here.
So react to it.
The story of the New York Sun today: as surge begins to take hold in Baghdad, tribal leaders turn on al-Qaeda.
The date line of this story is Abu Ghraib.
And in the aftermath of America's recent troop surge in Iraq, tribal leaders throughout Iraq are turning on al-Qaeda, and American military commanders are trying to exploit the new development by bringing tribe members into the Iraqi security forces.
Now, that's interesting, but listen to this.
This is the nut of the story.
Despite the rising antipathy, that would be anger for those of you who watch Channel 13 in Sacramento.
Despite the rising antipathy toward al-Qaeda, the tribal sheikhs in the Sunni regions in particular are very clear that their new alliance with the Americans is merely a tactical one.
Sheikh Hussein summed it up.
Well, we would like America a friend to rebuild the country.
It's what we want.
It's what the tribes want.
But to stay here as a military force indefinitely is unacceptable.
For Sheikh Hussein, however, the prospect of a speedy exit is also unacceptable.
At a luncheon at a home of one of his cousins, he told the reporter on this story, Eli Lake, the New York Sun, he said, please, Eli, tell the Democrats for now to stop pressuring Bush.
So an Iraqi cleric aware of the damage the Democrats are doing to the future of Iraq has asked a reporter for the New York Sun to go tell the Democrats to lighten up on Bush for now.
Richard and Raytown, Missouri, outside Kansas.
Raytown, Missouri, in fact, is where the tomb of the unknown bowler is.
Great to have you, Richard.
Toyser and honor to talk to you, Professor Rush.
Thank you, sir.
What I wanted to let you know is that these Obama appearances in St. Louis and Kansas City were fundraisers.
And they charge in St. Louis $50 for general admission, $25 for seniors.
And here in Kansas City, we're only half as much.
So it's $25 for general admission and $10 for students, the seniors.
And as a 55-year-old grandfather who's finishing up his fourth year in medical school, I couldn't afford to go to those.
Would you have anyway?
I mean, I can't imagine.
We were just sitting here discussing your call before you got to go.
Snerdley, what is this?
Because he put up their Obama was a paid event.
And I thought it might have meant Obama paid the audience to come in.
But it was the other way around.
Obama charged them.
We need some money desperately so he's charging them this way.
But would you, how many people, you know, fundraisers generally have some value for the people donating, like a dinner or a picture with a cat.
But I mean, would you pay $50 to go hear a candidate speak?
Yeah, like I said, to the fourth-year medical student, his grandfather, no, I could not afford to.
But, I mean, even if you could.
No, I would never go listen to that dribble.
It doesn't matter who the politician is.
Actually, if Mitt Rodney was coming, I probably would listen to him.
George Bush, I would.
But Democrats, no, I wouldn't get paid ten for that.
Well, I don't know of any other.
I shouldn't say this.
I don't know in the modern era if anybody's out there charging admission for a politician's speech and calling it a fundraiser.
That probably is happening.
So the top price was $50, you say?
That was in St. Louis.
It was $25 here in Kansas City.
Well, what does that say about Kansas City?
The top price of Kansas City was $20.
That's insulting.
I lived in Kansas City.
If they're going to charge St. Louisans $50 and they're only going to charge Kansas City in $25, what does he get?
What was the Obama problem with Kansas City?
I don't know where they are.
Oh, you might turn it around somewhere.
Maybe he just thinks the people in St. Louis are saps, and he knows the people in Kansas City are too smart to figure it out.
You start charging prices like that.
I mean, the headline in the Kansas City Star should have been minorities hardest hit.
I mean, you just heard Oprah talking about related matters here.
Okay, $50 St. Louis, $25 Kansas City.
I'm still not impressed.
I sold out the Lion King Theater in 20 minutes at $77 a ticket for WABC.
We had 2,500 or 3,000 people in Detroit a couple weeks ago for far more than $50 a ticket.
Now, the money went to charity, but still, I still say, even at $25 a pop, and you are the beneficiary of all of this doting, the positive press, the constant media attention, you are the future.
You are being portrayed as something new and unique, never before to appear in politics.
And you're charging $25 top ticket in Kansas City, and you go to a place not even air-conditioned.
I read the story about it.
It's sweltering with buddy heat.
It was hot in there.
Even so, even so, $25, this is still not good.
And I'm not changing my mind about the fact that the two people in there that were photographed asleep were not plants by the Clinton administration.
A guy that might have been dragged there by a spouse.
I don't know.
But $25 is nothing to Clinton Inc. to get a couple people in there, a total of $50 and then act like they're asleep for the photographers.
Well, worth the price of admission.
I can't imagine if somebody would willingly pay 25 bucks a ticket to go hear a politician and fall asleep in there.
I mean, if you're going to pay 25 bucks to go hear a politician, you want to be there, right?
You got some level of excitement attached to it.
You've got some adrenaline flowing.
These are exciting events.
Plus, I don't know about you, but if it's really sweldering in there with a lot of body heat, it's tough to fall asleep in anyway.
John, in Bogotan, New Jersey, Bogotan, New Jersey.
Hey, Rush, that's Bogoda.
Yeah, thank you, sir.
All right.
Thank you for taking my call.
You bet.
It's Bogoda.
You said it's Bogoda, New Jersey.
Yes.
Not the same as Bogota.
Good.
That's very wise of the town fathers there.
Oh, yeah.
Real quick, you played some comments by Mr. Obama before, and they got me a little confused.
He was asked what he would do if there was another attack.
Is that right?
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
And I'm going to set it up so you know, the question, the first time it was asked was during the Democrat debate on MSNBC in South Carolina.
And the question from Brian Williams: God forbid, God forbid, God forbid, he said, if as we are sitting here tonight in this debate, two American cities are attacked with nuclear weapons, and we know without a shadow of a doubt it's Al-Qaeda, what would you do?
That was the question.
And then Stephanopoulos gave him a mulligan on the answer by asking him the question yesterday.
So you didn't say that you would retaliate, and the opponent said you showed lack of decisiveness and bad instincts.
What did you hear when you heard the answer?
Well, it sounds like he said that he would make sure everyone's safe first and make sure that the emergency response was satisfactory, and then he would make sure that it doesn't happen again, and then he would find out who was responsible.
Well, that's what if he can do that in that order, then why didn't he just make sure it doesn't happen in the first place?
Well, because the Democrats cannot, as a party, they can't allow themselves to have feelings like that about people.
Well, for Barack Obama or any Democrat to take steps to prevent something like that from happening, what would they have to do?
They'd have to say that there are people out there who want to do it.
And they would have to say that those people are mean.
And since they dislike Bush more than those people, there was a New York Times story, I guess, this morning or yesterday.
And this, I don't have it in front of me, but the story was very sympathetic to militant Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A friend of mine who lost a son in 9-11 sent me an email early this morning.
He was just outraged.
Why would the New York Times give sympathy to these people who want to do it again and have already done it?
And I wrote him back.
I said, look, now you know this.
To understand news today, you have to understand it is agenda-driven and it is attached to the agenda of the Democrat Party.
And right now, the Democrat Party and the drive-by media are intent on destroying George Bush and any and all of his policies, including securing defeat in the war on terror.
If you don't understand that, you are going to split a blood vessel if you read the New York Times on a daily basis or watch some of these cable TV networks.
You've got to understand what the point is.
And Obama, by virtue of your alert reaction to what he said, for the Democrats to suggest that we've got to take steps to stop Group A from blowing us up, they're going to have to say bad things about Group A, and that's discriminatory.
So they will wait till after Group A attacks to give themselves cover.
And even after Group A attacks, which they have, take a look at what the Democrats are doing, finding no fault with Group A, finding fault with their own country and George W. Bush.
A couple of notes on taxes, ladies and gentlemen.
In the New York Times today, there's a story about Obama saying that he will raise taxes on the top 1% of American earners, and he will use the money to pay for health care.
We've heard this before, over and over, from any Democrat.
He didn't suggest, however, that he would raise other taxes to pay for expanded services.
He wants to roll back the Bush tax cuts on the top 1% of people who don't need it, he said.
It's none of your business, sir.
It's not the government's job to assign need to people.
If people start accepting the fact that government can assign various incomes to certain people because that's all they need and then go take whatever else is left, we are in deep due due.
We're going to have to fight this tax battle all over again.
If these guys win the White House, folks, hold on to your back pockets because it's not about raising money.
It's about control over you.
It's about expanding the power of government to intrude in your personal life.
But the second story, we all know that the Democrats despise tax cuts, especially for the rich.
Warren Buffett is the rich, second wealthiest guy in the fruited plane.
And he opposes, for example, repealing of the death tax.
He thinks that the government should take it all, that you ought to not be allowed to even shelter 45%.
Well, I don't think that's he, all this talk about the death tax.
He's opposed to eliminating it.
He thinks the government should continue to tax at confiscatory rates inheritances.
Yet, get this headline is from Bloomberg.
Buffett battles Bush as corporate jet owners fight tax increase.
Well, I wonder what this is about.
Well, let's read it and find out.
U.S. airlines, which already share the sky with corporate jets, are pushing to share their tax burden too.
The president is proposing to cut the amount of tax that passenger carriers like American and JetBlue and Continental pay in federal taxes every year by $1.68 billion.
Most of that obligation would be shifted to small jet operators, including General Motors, ExxonMobil, and NetJets, which Warren Buffett owns.
NetJets is a fractional ownership plan.
You give Warren Buffett X number of dollars and you get so many hours on one of his airplanes every year.
A lot of people are doing this fractional ownership business.
Now, the Bush plan is there's no tax cutting.
They're just going to shift the burden.
The way it works right now, the government collects $2,015 in taxes every time a full Boeing 757 flies between New York and Florida.
A Gulfstream 4, a G4, which that's what that is.
For those of you watching on the DittoCam, my model back there is of a G4SP.
If you fly on a G4, similar route, the tax that the owner pays is $236.
Under the president's plan, the operators of Boeing would see their taxes reduced from $2,000 to $1,298, and the owners of Gulfstream would pay $837, up from $236.
And the reason for this is these, by the way, the passengers are paying the tax.
This business that the airlines are paying the tax, it's built into the ticket price.
And one of the reasons or purposes of the tax is to help defray costs of the air traffic control system.
And the airlines say, that's not fair.
I mean, we've got all these corporate jets out there, and they're using air traffic control every bit as much as we do, but they're not paying nearly as much.
They may have a point to a certain extent, but they really don't when it comes to passengers.
And they're carrying far more passengers than private jets are.
And the number of airplanes, private versus commercial, in the air at any one time, I don't really know the breakdown of this.
But Warren Buffett, he owns a lot of NetJets owns Boku corporate jets.
And this tax increase, and he doesn't want to pay that tax increase.
Isn't that fascinating?
He doesn't want to pay the tax increase.
It's a tax increase on the rich.
You'd have to say that it is.
And he's one of the rich guys.
I just found this a little interesting.
Anyway, a quick timeout.
We'll be back and continue in just a second.
Okay, folks, another exciting excursion into Broadcast Excellences in the can.
Roger Hedgecock will be here tomorrow.
I will be out back on Wednesday from New York.
And I will miss you tomorrow.
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