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Aug. 6, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:32
August 6, 2007, Monday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Hey, hey, hey, hey.
Greetings, my friends, and welcome.
You are tuned to the most listened to radio talk show in America.
This is the Rush Limbaugh program, and we are here behind this Golden EIB microphone, the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
A thrill, a delight to be with you.
Telephone number if you'd like to join us, 800-282-2882, and the uh email address rush at EIBNet.com.
Well, busy weekend, busy morning.
We got uh uh information overload out there, but if there's one place that you can count on the synthesize it all down to what it really means, what's important or what's not important, it's this show and uh me, your host, highly trained broadcast specialist L. Rushball.
Your phone number again, 800-282-288-2, and the email address is rush at EIBNet.com.
Uh well, we got the Republican debate.
We got uh we got sound bites from I watched it a little bit.
I was flying back from New York yesterday.
I watched a little bit of it on uh television.
I didn't even know it was gonna be on.
What are the what are Republican candidates doing having a debate at 1030 in the morning or eight in the whatever it was?
Their base is in church.
And of course, nobody's talking about this.
That's why I'm gonna play some sound bites.
Some of it was actually pretty good.
It was actually a debate.
Uh you had you had Stephanopoulos there and David Yepsen from the uh from the Des Moines register, but these guys are going back and forth with each other.
It actually was a debate.
Some of this you'll enjoy hearing.
Uh let's see, we've got uh oh, how about the FBI searching the home of this guy, this attorney in Washington, uh, in because they're investigating the warrantless wiretap leaker.
They think they may have found the guy this idiot was out posting all over the internet.
He's a Clinton administration holdover.
Exactly.
The kind of thing that I feared, and this can be traced back, this whole breaking down of the FISA law, which by the way, the Democrats couldn't rush to fix over the weekend, uh, couldn't wait to rush.
Did you notice this?
Uh while they're while their little kook fringe base was having its little convention up in Chicago, which, by the way, the congressional leadership all bailed on Saturday morning.
Pelosi Reed and Ram Emanuel said, I guess what?
We can't make it.
We have to stay in the house.
We've got big votes all day.
Uh the presidential candidates went up there.
Hillary got booed a couple times, once over what she said about lobbyists.
Uh, forget the other time she got it, whatever it was.
Um what else we have?
Uh well, that's this it's a lot here.
Uh I think probably the Democrats are going to change their mantra here on the meaning of the uh 2006 election.
Ever since 2006 election, that that uh uh outcome uh mandate was claimed to be to get us out of a rock.
I th I think now what what's probably uh going to be said is that the 2006 election was a mandate to fix our bridges.
So the people of this country elected us to fix the infrastructure.
We need to raise taxes and we need to spend, spend, spend, spend, spend we're gonna get this done.
Uh blah, blah, blah.
Anyway, I want to start here with something.
I don't know how long ago I said this.
It's just more evidence, ladies and gentlemen, that I know exactly what I'm talking about, particularly when I am talking about our good friends, the uh the commie libs.
Mr. Sterley, you might be able to help me remember when this was.
This is back in the it has to be late 80s, early 90s, in the midst of the then feverish debate over abortion.
One of the things that I pointed out was that uh, you know, we're starting, we're starting to eliminate life in this country based on convenience to the living.
And we're doing it at the elderly end, and we're doing it at the beginning in the womb.
And uh then there came a in the midst of all this, uh story came out about medical genetics and how they were advancing.
Uh uh who?
What?
Yeah, co-call Colorado governor was talking about uh uh genetics and and uh how we can make maybe make designer babies.
Uh that we're learning to identify in the womb the traits that kids are gonna have.
And I said this is this is gonna require some really serious ethics here, folks, because if we're not careful, we're gonna be able to tell prospective parents that their kids are gonna be prone to freckles, red hair, and overweight.
Uh and on the basis of that, parents might decide to terminate the pregnancy and try over.
Because who wants to bring a fat, red-headed, freckle-faced person into the world?
Um, and then I said, if they ever, if there is a genetic link to homosexuality, said if, and if they ever find that, you are gonna see the fastest turnaround from pro-choice to pro-life that you've ever heard.
Because can you imagine prospective parents go into the OBGYN and says, guess what?
We just found your kid's going to be fat, freco-faced, red hair, and potentially gay.
What will the parents do?
Well, I warned of this.
I said, this is all coming.
This this concept that if you don't like the original conception of your chow, uh, that uh you can just scrub it and start all over.
And here we have what is this from?
This is from um it's an Australian newspaper, I believe.
Yeah, yeah.
The news.
Couples should be able to design the characteristics of their children, including personality traits during IVF treatment, according to an Oxford University expert.
Australian-born ethicist and chair of Oxford's heroes center for practical ethics, Julian Savoliescu told a news.com in Australia that couples seeking IVF should have the right to give their future child greater opportunities through genetic manipulation.
If uh if they're having an IVF for other reasons and they want to select from a bunch of embryos already created for some uh legitimate purpose, I don't see why they shouldn't give couples information that manipulation is available.
If we can enable couples to influence the degree of self-control that their children have, I think that's the sort of thing we should be offering people.
This is a guy an ethicist.
Exactly what I want.
No ethics whatsoever is out there now suggesting that in vitro fertilization couples should actually design their kids.
Should actually I just I just want to I I knew this is gonna happen.
Uh and you know, this this has this has this has uh uh roots to the eugenics movement.
The eugenics movement was making sure, well, we only want a population of certain IQs, certain race, we what and uh the you gen this this this has roots to it.
You start you start getting into designer babies.
Well, where do you draw the line?
Where do you uh where do you stop it?
Just well.
You're asking a wrong person, Snur Snurley said, wouldn't it kind of be cool to have the kind of kid you always wanted?
Presumes you always wanted one.
I no, I I I think this is fraught with uh really potential harm, big harm.
As for for all of society, for civilization, I really do.
Now, the cops, this is from Gizmodo.com.
Cops have a new way for controlling a crowd.
There's a new flashlight out there that makes you throw up.
Um it it it it's it's so bright that it temporarily blinds you, then it gets you all disoriented and dizzy.
It uses special types of really bright LEDs, and the flashlight's beam pulses and flashes while quickly changing its color, and all this somehow makes you feel like you're gonna throw up.
Of course, if you if you want to avoid throwing up, you close your eyes so you don't see the flashlight.
But then if you close your eyes, you can't aim the gun at the cop or anybody else uh that is giving you trouble.
You can start firing wildly.
Uh say it uh this is intelligent optical systems manufactured.
They're gonna start testing this flashlight 15 inches this fall on some lucky volunteers at Penn State University.
Want to congratulate a couple friends, Michael Irvin with uh his induction the uh NFL Hall of Fame over the weekend.
Uh he gave that speech with no notes.
I don't know, we've got some I think a couple bites from it.
No notes, just straight from his heart was really uh tremendous.
I got to know him very well when I was at ESPN, and of all the guys I worked there, I probably developed a closer relationship to Irvin than uh than any of the others.
And my buddy Tom Glavin won his 300th game uh for the uh for the New York Mets.
I I first met Glavin the first year I played in the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic.
He was uh on my team with the then Atlanta Falcons quarterback Chris Chandler.
So uh congratulations to those guys.
Those are those are uh both no mean feats.
There may not ever be another 300-game winner in Major League Baseball the way the game is played now.
Uh it's it's uh There's nobody close.
Randy Johnson, I guess the closest, but his uh career may be over with uh back injury.
What is it?
284 wins out there.
Come on, Brian, your sports fan.
Speaking, no, I you don't have to look it up.
I know it's 284.
How about the Steelers last night in the opening round of the NFL preseason, shellacking the New Orleans?
I know it doesn't mean anything.
Uh, but it was still uh it was still great to see.
All right, quick timeout, folks.
You sit tight, we'll come back, and I don't know what I'm gonna start with here because it's overload, but by the time we get back, I'll have figured it out.
America's truth detector, the doctor of democracy, general, all around good guy, national treasure, a man who's running the country, you know it and I know it, Rush Limbaugh behind the golden EIB microphone.
Uh, folks, before I get to an issue here, I've I've thought about how I want to start the program.
I want I want to tell you, I mean this from the bottom of my heart how how proud I am of you.
Uh my dear audience, I I'm I'm so proud of you people.
I've how how nice you are, how loyal you are.
But you know, mostly what makes me swell with pride is how informed you are.
I would put you up against any audience of any news source.
I don't care.
You put it on radio, put it on television, put it in print, and especially you are so much more informed than readers of the New York Times, and I cannot tell you both personally and professionally how much pride I have in that.
And of course, this has been documented by the Pew Center for people in the press.
You have been rated the most knowledgeable and informed audience in all of broadcast media.
Now, let's go back to last week, just as an illustration of this.
If if I were to ask you what were the most important news items of the month of July, right up there, probably near the top, if not numero uno itself, would be the op-ed in the New York Times by the two guys from Brookings, which said, hey, we might be able to win this thing.
The surge is working.
And it appeared where?
It appeared in the New York Times.
And I read it, told you about it.
I'm sure you've read it.
I'll bet you there aren't anybody.
The New York Times, maybe Jim Rutenberg, who listens to this program, for example.
We expose ourselves to what they are doing.
A war we just might win.
That probably, especially in the last week of the month of July.
If I were to take a survey of you, this audience, that would be I'm sure it'd be at the top of the list if not close.
Now, what did New York Times readers think were the most important stories?
The Times, if you go to their website, will tell you which of their stories are the most read articles of the month.
Do you know what the number one, according to the Times, the number one most read article of the month in their newspaper and under website was?
An epic showdown is Harry Potter is initiated into adulthood.
That's the number one story of the New York Times website.
That's what they say about their own website, the Harry Potty Potter movie or book, whatever it was, number one.
Uh but it gets better.
Number two, most read, distributed story, New York Times, Summer Express, 100 simple meals ready in 10 minutes or less.
I am not making this up.
Number three, top red story, New York Times, a 135 million dollar home.
But if you have to ask the class warfare crowd wants to read about a 135 million dollar estates, of course they do.
Uh number four, the number four most read story in the New York Times.
According to their own website, letters from an 18-year-old Hillary Rodham to her then boyfriend.
Uh nowhere in the top five of the New York Times most read stories is that column, we just might win in New York.
They claim to have the uh you know the newspaper of record.
They Claim to uh uh have their pulse on all the news that's fit to print.
But I'll tell you, if that's what their audience on their website is reading in that order and what they consider to be the most important, what they're passing around, and I have to tell you, folks, we are so far ahead of the game.
I am so I can't tell you how proud of you I am because I just I know that that uh if if I were to able to take a survey much like uh uh yours is.
And I I'm not gonna count, you know, our our website.
Uh we do on our website.
We have a top four, top five ranked, it's I think it's top ten.
Uh, but it's not it's not and I've looked to see what they are, but it's it's not quite the same thing.
I just I I I looked at this what the Times readers think is most important, and I just was uh I was excited, because I know they have a a mindless, a p really mindless.
Just I mean, holes in their head audience.
And I don't.
I have you, and I think it's fabulous.
Now, FBI agents searched the home of former Justice Department lawyer Thomas Tam last week in an effort to determine who leaked details of the warrantless eavesdropping program to the news media.
Newsweek reported this uh on Sunday.
They cited two anonymous legal sources, the agents who had obtained a classified search warrant, took Tam's desktop computer, two laptops belonging to his kids, and some of Tam's personal files.
He left the Department of Justice last year.
He had worked in the Department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review.
Now that's I'm gonna call that from here on out the OIPR.
That's what its acronym is, because I don't want to waste all these syllables here on the Office of Intelligent Policy Review every time I have to talk about it.
But he worked that it was an it was an agency, the Justice Department, and this is the group, this is little s little little subdivision in there that works with the FISA court.
And deals with warrants.
In December of 2005, as you recall, the New York Times published a story exposing, quote unquote, the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program to eavesdrop on international phone calls and emails of U.S. residents without court warrants.
The eavesdropping was conducted without public knowledge, without any court approval until last January when the program was put under the authority of the FISA court.
And uh uh Alberto Gonzalez, the embattled attorney general, said that the leak really hurt our country.
And of course now the administration is going after these leakers, and this guy, Thomas Tam, appears to be at the top of the list.
Now we have a little update on this from Clarice Feldman, who does great work at the American thinker.com.
Uh what uh this this Tam guy, uh Thomas Tam, uh T-A-M-M is how he spells it, made a contribution to the Democrat National Committee in 2004.
He also posts on various blogs out there.
Uh and uh he he he's uh uh I don't know, he he he he uh there's a blog comment actually from uh from a Thomas Tam from November 2006, critical of the Bush administration not calling the Iraq war a civil war in psych uh sarcastic terms.
Um I'm not gonna bother reading the post, but uh basically goes on to say, well, I guess we're not gonna call it a civil war to one side's wearing gray, and they're in the south, and one side's wearing blue, and they're in the north, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Uh now, Clarice Feldman goes back to the 9-11 Commission report, page 95.
She says this.
But the prosecution of Aldrich Ames for espionage in 1994 revived concerns about the prosecutor's role in intelligence investigation.
And we're gonna get we're getting to the wall here that Jamie Gorellick and Janet Reno built during the Clinton administration that that prevented uh intelligence agencies from sharing information because they were they were going to uh uh grand juries with this stuff.
The Department I'm reading here from from the 9-11 Commission report, the Department of Justice's OIPR, where this Thomas Tam guy worked, is responsible for reviewing and presenting all FISA applications to the FISA court.
It worried that because of the numerous prior cons consultations between FBI agents and prosecutors, that the judge might rule the FISA warrants had been misused.
If that had happened, Aldrich Ames might have escaped conviction.
Richard Scrugs, the uh acting head of OIPR, complained to Attorney General Reno about the lack of information sharing controls, i.e., the wall, on his own, he began imposing information sharing procedures for FISA material.
The OIPR became the gatekeeper for the flow of FISA information to criminal prosecutors.
And Clarice Feldman notes that the OIPR was also the stumbling block in the trial of Zacharius Massawi.
So FISA seemed to be working just fine prior to 1994 until Gorelic et al.
decide to tweak it, and now FISA has become part of the problem.
She says, I think I'm beginning to understand now.
This guy Tam just happened to be in that shop.
I don't know how long he worked at DOJ, but he received an award in two thousand, which means he was a holdover from the prior administration.
So bottom line is the guy that the Justice Department is investigating for leaking to the New York Times about the warrantless wiretap program trying to sabotage it as a guy that's a holdover from the Clinton administration.
Precisely what we've all thought, is it not?
These people infestating uh all these places, CIA, DOJ, Pentagon.
You name it.
It's great to see the Bush administration in action on this.
Uh bulletin, bulletin, bulletin, bulletin, bulletin, breaking news from ABC.
It's time, ladies and gentlemen, to stop the check writing to Minnesota.
A coal mine in central Utah just collapsed or earlier today after a uh four point oh magnitude earthquake trapping six miners.
Uh inside.
I'll tell you the infrastructure going to hell under the Bush administration.
My gosh, mines can't even handle a Yeah.
Mines can't even handle a four point oh earthquake.
What's happening to this country?
What do they think we are?
Russia?
China?
What do you mean, why are we mining coal?
That's good question.
Clandestine Bush Project, obviously, mining coal to pollute the planet.
Destroy our uh our climate.
Maurice in Canyon Lake, Texas, your first as we go to the phones.
Nice to have you here on the EIB network.
Thank you, Rush.
It's an honor to speak to you.
Longtime listener, first time caller, a little bit nervous.
Uh your call screen are said to get right to the point.
And I'll say that uh, you know, you and I agree on 99.9% of of all the issues by the same thing.
Well, that's wonderful.
That's wonderful.
That's absolutely that's fabulous.
But there must be one-tenth of one percent that's causing you to call to me.
That is correct.
And it's uh it's your enthusiasm over Michael Irvin's selection of the Hall of Fame.
I think that's a blight on the Hall of Fame when you consider his his record uh of cocaine use, cocaine abuse.
Uh you know, he was uh in in uh in in another world, he would have been suspended from the NFL.
And I just highly disagree with that.
Uh I agree he's a he's a tr he's a tremendous athlete.
He may be a good person now, but uh with that record, uh I I just disagree with that.
Do you think people are um uh should be denied redemption?
Oh no.
No, I don't.
But that's uh, you know, that's a tremendous honor.
You know, to be uh Yeah, it's rarefied air.
No question but playing in the NFL is rarefied air all by itself, aren't you?
And uh making the Hall of Fame uh is uh is as well.
But the the you know the message that that gives to young athletes concerns me.
Uh so the message you derive from it is that you can go ahead and abuse cocaine and have on your thirtieth birthday a bunch of uh hookers in a hotel room and still make the hall of fame.
That that's you got it.
I I don't think you you you really think that's the message that uh that that uh uh people are gonna drive from this?
Well, you know, if you're not gonna be able to do that.
You know, he was on he was he was on trial.
He did show up in a mink coat, uh Joe Namath uh Oh, I know, I know.
Yeah.
He was on trial.
Troy Aikman was in the courtroom every day.
I still turn off I still turn off ESPN when he's on.
Well um, I just think uh other sanctions.
I I understand.
But what what if at age thirty, when all that stuff happened, what if going through it and overcoming it and solving it uh has made him a better person.
Why why can't the person that he has become serve as the role model?
Well, uh, you know, that's that that certainly would be admirable, but uh, you know, he's had an incident since since then, too, not too long ago.
But supposedly it was his friend uh pipe and everything.
You know that.
Supposedly and and all that.
Let me I'll tell you, I have a I have a brief soundbite of Michael Irvin's uh acceptance speech.
Uh did you hear any of it?
No.
Well, why don't you listen to it with me and then I'm not trying to put you on the spot.
That's all right.
You You listen to it with me, and then after it finished, about it's about a minute, and then you uh you tell me what you think.
Are you ready?
Do I have to turn on the radio or no, you'll hear it on the phone.
Very good.
Don't turn on the radio or you won't hear it for I will not turn on the radio.
Yeah, just listen to it here on the phone.
Here we go.
I said right here where you are last year, and I watched the class of 2006.
And I said, wow.
That's what a Hall of Famer is.
Certainly I am not that.
And I doubt it.
I would ever have the chance to stand before you today.
So when I returned home, I spoke with Mike when he lied to, and I said, That's how you do it, son.
You do it like they did it.
I wanted to stand in front of my boys and say, do it like your dad, like any proud dad would want to.
And at that moment, I a voice came over me.
And it said, look up.
Get up.
And don't ever give up.
You tell everyone or anyone that has ever doubted.
They did not measure up.
I want it to quit.
You tell them to look up.
Get up.
And don't ever give up.
Now, let me put some of this in context because what he was talking about here in in his uh talking to his boys, what he also said was that uh uh he didn't think he was good enough to be their dad at a point in his life, and he was hoping that uh other members Hall of Fame would be the ones they would look up to.
And he didn't think that he was a role good role mod as a husband because of what he had done.
He was hoping his boys would look to others to find out a good father.
And now that he's made the Hall of Fame, uh he's uh he I mean he was crying through uh a good portion of this.
I mean, the puddles of tears under his eyes.
Yeah.
So uh, you know, he's gone through uh a lot.
Uh his playing credentials can't be denied.
Uh oh no, no, and I and I don't deny that.
He's a great athlete.
So what do you think of what you just heard?
Well, uh my context of your worry about it for him.
You you're your context in the remember your context here.
You're worried about him being a bad role model.
So what do you think of it?
Well, my first thought is who wrote who wrote that for him.
No, no, he spoke it with no notes.
No notes.
Spoke with no notes.
He's uh one of the few who went out there with no notes.
Uh he had no.
Well, you know, Russia, I hope I hope that he's rehabilitated, and I hope that uh and uh and uh that that he is a good person today, but I still think that that that he should not be in the hall of fame.
Well I mean I mean how do you compare that?
I'm I'm not gonna compare that with Pete Rose.
Uh yeah.
Well, it's a little bit different.
Gambling on the game when you are a manager of a team.
Uh is is uh a little bit different.
None of us are without sin, and none of us are without uh failure.
None of us are without fault.
None of us.
None of us.
Uh and I've all I can tell you is that I know Michael personally and I like him.
And he's uh uh you don't get to see this when he's you know doing his football work on ESPN or wherever he's gonna do it next, but uh he's pretty deep guy and has a tremendous he'd if if there's anybody that understands the rarefied air and opportunity he had, given where he came from to play in the NFL and to exceed, it's Michael Urban.
I don't I don't think especially now he had to quit early because of a neck injury.
I don't think he takes any of this uh for granted.
But but Maurice, I'm glad you called.
I appreciate it.
We'll go to Toledo next.
This is Christina, you're up on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hi, Ross.
It's an honor to talk with you.
Thank you very much.
About twelve years ago, I wrote a paper in college regarding uh eugenics and the human genome project and uh idea of designer babies, basically.
And it was literally, you know, one boy, blonde hair, easy on the eyes, please hold the stupidity.
That's literally the paper I titled it, and it really had to do with when you take away a trait that might be genetically what might be considered, you know, undesirable.
Let's even say the potential for you know stupid Stupidity.
Are you maybe taking away a trait that was keeping that that child from maybe having cancer at a later date?
Or if you get rid of a cancer trait, might there be another Wait, are you suggesting there's a link between stupidity and cancer?
No, no, no.
I'm saying it's kind of like the bully on the playground.
You take away one bully, there might be another bully waiting in the wings to come up strong.
Oh, I see what you're saying.
Well, you know what it's a good point.
What you're saying is I really don't know nearly enough to be monkeying around with this.
This is not our place.
This this is not our purview, be messing around with this kind of that that that that is uh that is my point.
It's the height of arrogance.
It is it the it's it's the uh the the just vanity, like like like uh like you can't believe.
So you're saying if you remove a genetic trait such as stupidity, you might open the doors for something else to happen to the kid who might not be as stupid as he would have been.
Exactly.
What do we do with a bunch of mensa members?
I mean, are they going to do the daily job that maybe someone of not such a higher intelligence is able to do?
And would they be ever met you ever met a Mensa member?
No, I haven't.
Are you one?
No.
No, no, no, no, no.
I'm not sure.
I thought I may I may qualify, but I'm I'm not a member.
The the best the best way to express this to you to show you Bill Buckley won one of his many classic lines that I would just assume I would prefer, in fact, to be governed by the first one hundred names from the Boston phone book than the faculty at Harvard.
Wow.
Right.
And essentially this is what you're saying.
Look, uh uh Christina, thanks much.
I gotta uh uh take a quick uh jot here down to uh profit center.
Be right back after this.
Welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
It's time to read the stitches on a fast ball.
I have a story here.
From of all places, the Columbus Ohio dispatch.
And why, look at the headline.
Wealthiest taxpayers are escaping fair share at the nation's overall expense.
Wow.
I wonder why this story happens to Pierre.
Now, could could it possibly be because our infrastructure is falling apart?
Could it possibly be because of the bridge collapse in Minneapolis?
Hmm.
Wealthiest taxpayers escaping fair share at the nation's overall expense.
It's written by Robin Blumner.
And I assume this is a female because it's spelled R-O-B-Y-N.
Let me give you an excerpt here.
The Democrats in Congress.
Actually, it's it's an editorial, so I don't I think it's an editorial, maybe a column.
The Democrats in Congress need to understand that their far their party's future depends not on collecting money from the rich for campaign contributions, but in collecting money from the rich for taxes.
The worst thing the Democrats can do is reinforce the view that it doesn't matter which party is in power since they are all beholden to the halves.
How big an ignoramus must this woman or person be to write this story now?
Well, I say this because the government is awash in money.
The deficit's lower than it's ever than the forecasts.
You have uh tax receipts pouring in, surprising everybody with lower rates on everybody.
It's how you do it.
Now, if the if the f if the focus here is generating revenue for the treasury for the government, so we can do the precious work saving our infrastructure or whatever the hell else the liberals think is worthwhile, then by golly, realize how you do it.
You don't do it by raising taxes.
I don't know what the number, the corresponding number will be today.
But back when I first started studying this tax business in the 80s, at that time, you could confiscate all of the wealth.
You get you could you could confiscate what was it?
How did it go now?
You can confiscate, not tax.
You could confiscate uh all the wealth from people who earn something over like 750,000 dollars and run the government for two weeks.
You can take it all, and you can run we're talking trillions here, folks.
Three trillion is the next budget.
You you are not going to improve anything by taxing a specific group of people.
Um you're not gonna raise any more revenue.
You do it by lowering rates.
Now the the the thrust of this story is Warren Buffett's claim that uh uh that he's a third richest man in the world, and he blasted the U.S. tax system because he said he pays a lower rate of taxes than his secretary.
He said without trying to avoid taxes, he paid 17.7% on the forty-six million dollars he made in 2006 while his secretary, who made sixty thousand, was taxed at thirty percent.
I can explain this.
I I'm not gonna justify it, but I don't know how much of this forty six million he earned showed up as earned income.
You know, as I've told you before, the the uh the income tax is designed to keep people like his secretary from becoming wealthy.
There is no wealth tax.
So this is a big misnomer, and this this reporter is clueless.
You don't when we talk about raising taxes on the rich, we're starting families of four.
What?
What is a Democrat number now?
Two on $200,000 a year.
You start raising their taxes, they're never going to have any savings.
They're never going to be able to get their kids to college without student loan.
Even those people aren't.
But they're certainly not going to become the rich.
But people like Buffett and others that have all these gazillions, there's no tax on their portfolios other than what they sell it.
Um a stock or an asset, and the co and the capital gains rate's 15%, which by the way has caused a lot of movement in the stock market, pro and con, but it's it's been it's been very good for business all down the line.
Uh, but there's no tax on wealth.
There is a tax on income, and the tax on income is designed to keep everybody who is not wealthy from getting there.
Uh I'm talking about genuine, genuine wealth, not the way Democrats define rich.
Uh but but you know, Warren Buffett, for crying out loud.
I mean, he can do all kinds of things.
You know what he does?
He scoops up uh businesses that uh are uh uh inherited by people whose parents have just died because they can't afford to pay the death tax of 55 percent.
You know how many businesses the in the the people who inherit them have to sell them because they can't pay the death tax.
So the business leaves the hands of the family that had it all along.
This has happened to some family-owned newspapers, in fact.
And people like Buffett go in and buy these little companies and then make them part of the corporate empire, whatever.
That's it's fine, but that this notion that we're not taxed enough is absurd.
We are taxed too much.
This this story misses the whole point.
We pay too much.
Our government is a wash in money.
Three trillion dollars.
State governments run surpluses even today as we speak.
And and the reason that our the the politicians run around for all stripes Republican, Democrat, liberal, communist, socialist, whatever.
It is goofy and slap happy because they've got all this money to spend.
When they talk about raising your taxes, it's an it's an effort to control you.
It's not about generating more money.
I would I would tell Senator McCain and the rest of this clowns uh that think money is corrupting politics and so what we need to do is not take the money out of politics.
We need to take the money out of government.
Here, let me give you a real world example on taxes.
In North Carolina this past weekend, there was uh something they do every year, tax-free only on certain items, like back to school stuff.
Uh clothing, shoes, notebooks, pencils, even computers.
Up to $3,500.
There was no sales tax on this stuff.
The fifth year in a row that the state of North Carolina has done this.
Uh, yeah, I know it.
It happens in Florida as well.
It it well, guess what?
It turns out that uh lots of people in North Carolina run to the stores, same thing in Florida.
We're talking about a 7% sales tax in North Carolina.
A lot of people said, ah, nobody's gonna make a special trip to the mall to save seven per BS.
The places end up being flooded.
Um this one brief weekend will often serve to make up for a bad weekend at Christmas time for retailers.
That's how much business they do when they get rid of the sales tax in North Carolina.
And there's a lot of uh promotion and tie-ins to other purchases that uh the that they want you to get uh buy when you're there buying the tax-free items.
So, here you've got state of Florida, we got exempt Florida because they won't really have a state income tax here, but let's look at North Carolina.
Five years into this, uh it it just goes great guns.
Now, how is it that the legislators in North Carolina don't see the real world application of lower taxes, this case, no or no taxes, and then incorporate that in other elements of the uh of the state budget because it's about control.
Uh the real world evidence is out there, and reporters don't see it.
None of these people who are for high taxes see it because they're libs and it's uh and and their minds are closed.
They don't see real-world examples uh right in front of them.
All right, uh, folks, got to take a quick time out here.
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