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Aug. 24, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:24
August 24, 2007, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
That's 10 for Johnny Donovan.
Yes, this is Dr. Walter E. Williams filling in for the vacation Rush Limbaugh.
And we have a lot of business today.
And you can be on with us by calling 800-282-2882.
This is the end of the summer, and class is about to begin next week.
And I'm looking forward to the start of classes where I can push back the frontiers of ignorance.
And you know, the wonderful thing about classes starting again, you see all the students standing around, mingling around, smoking cigarettes during the break.
And I just love that, folks.
I just love to see all these wonderful young people.
Anyway, before Rush left, he didn't have time.
He really messed up, but he didn't have time to talk about a brilliant column that I wrote last week.
And he asked me to share that column with you folks out there.
And it was covered in about 140 newspapers across the country, a whole bunch of websites, including Jewish World Review, Townhall.com, blah, blah, blah, blah, WorldNet Daily.
And anyway, the column said essentially that last year, Philadelphia, last year among the 10 largest cities in our country, Philadelphia had the highest murder rate.
It had 406 victims.
Now, this year, Philadelphia is going to outdo itself, I believe, because they have over 240 murders so far.
And other cities, such as other cities with large black populations, such as Baltimore, Detroit, and Washington, D.C., they also experience high rates of murder and violent crime.
And so I think one of the conclusions you can make is that the high murder rate is essentially, it's predominantly a black problem.
Now, according to, now you say, well, gee, Williams, well, what do you mean?
Well, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 1976 and 2005, blacks being 13% of the population committed 52% of the nation's homicides.
And they were 46% of the victims of homicide.
And 94% of the victims of black homicide were murdered by another black.
Now, and there are other crimes in black neighborhoods, you know, violent crimes, high rates of all.
Blacks experience high rates of all categories of serious violent crime.
Now, what do liberals and their political allies say about the problem?
They say it's easy accessibility to guns.
And what do they mean by that?
We need more gun control.
Now, that has to be nonsense, ladies and gentlemen.
Because why?
Because guns do not commit crimes.
People do.
Now, let's look at a little tiny bit of evidence why this might be true.
Now, up through 1979, the FBI reported homicides, arrests for homicides, sorted by racial breakdowns that included Japanese.
Now, between 1976 and 1978, there were 48,695 murders in our country.
Japanese Americans accounted for 21 of them.
Now, so that translates into an annual murder rate among Japanese of one per 100,000 of the population.
Now, how come Japanese don't commit these murders?
Is it because Japanese just can't find any guns?
I mean, and, you know, the rest of us, we can find guns, so we can shoot each other's heads off.
But the Japanese, these unfortunate people, they just can't find guns to go around killing people.
So when people talk about the need for gun control as a way to commit crime, to reduce crime, you have to ask them, well, what about the Japanese?
Can't they find guns?
Are they too stupid to find guns?
Now, the overwhelming, I believe that the reason why we have this high crime rate, not only among blacks, but among whites and among Americans in general, is because these predators that prey on law-abiding people, and in black neighborhoods, most of the people are law-abiding people, but they're subject to being preyed upon by these hoodlums.
And the reason why is that these hoodlums do not pay a high enough cost for their activities.
Now, a lot of people say, and one of the reasons why is because people say, well, the crime is caused by poverty.
It's caused by discrimination.
It's caused by unemployment.
That is utter nonsense.
During the 1940s and 50s, I lived in North Philadelphia.
And North Philadelphia is where most of the many of these murders are taking place in Philadelphia.
Now, during the 40s and 50s, when I grew up in North Philadelphia, it was at a time when blacks were much poorer than they are today, than we are today.
There was far more racial discrimination, far fewer opportunities, and other opportunities for employment and other opportunities for social mobility, upward social mobility.
But there was nowhere near the level of crime and wanton destruction that exists today.
That is, behavior that's accepted today just was not accepted back then, either by black adults or by policemen.
Now, also in the column, I pointed out that policemen, many times policemen know who the thugs are.
They know where the crack houses are, but because of various laws, they have an inability to make arrests and various raids.
So, here's the question I have to ask you folks.
Should black people, or for that matter, anybody else, any other people, should they accept government's dereliction of its first basic function?
What's the first basic function of government?
Is that is the first basic function of government is that of providing protection?
And my answer is no.
That is, people have the right to protect themselves.
And if the government won't protect you, you have to protect yourselves.
So you say, hey, Williams, are you talking about vigilantism?
Yes, I am.
Now, let me give you Webster's definition of a vigilantism.
It's defined as a volunteer committee organized to suppress and punish crime summarily as when the process of law are viewed as inadequate.
Now, an example of this kind of activity, vigilantism, was a number of years ago, the black Muslims began to patrol Mayfair Housing Project.
It's in Washington, D.C.
And it was a crime-ridden, drug-infested housing project in Washington, D.C.
Now, when the Muslims started patrolling, the black Muslims started patrolling those neighborhoods, guess what?
The drug lords and the gangs left.
This is back then.
I don't know what has happened since then.
Now, why did they leave?
Well, I think that they left because the black Muslims do not feel obliged to give Miranda warnings.
They just told these people, you hit the road or you're going to be punished.
And so I think that today that in these neighborhoods, I don't care whether there's a white or black neighborhood, I think that men should get together and patrol the streets and patrol the streets armed if necessary.
And if politicians and the police, they don't like it, well then they should do their jobs.
That is, no one, no one should have to live his life on a daily basis, you know, to live a life in fear of their life and safety.
And so, anyway, I think that it's abundant evidence that private citizens can do some things that the police cannot do.
You know, for example, I mean, can you imagine, you know, there's some thugs standing on the street corner and about 50 men come up to them and tell them to vacate the corner or we're going to whip your butt or shoot the butt if necessary.
I think that we need more of that.
And we'll be back with some of your calls after this.
We're back.
And it's Walter Williams sitting in for the vacationing Rush Limbaugh.
There's another story that you might be interested in.
This is more along the economic lines.
The New York Sun reported, well, they have a little story called Incredible Shrinking Deficit 2.
And they're saying that despite the George Bush tax cuts, the deficit is shrinking at a greater rate than formally predicted.
It's supposed to be the Congressional Budget Office says that their estimate for 2007 is $158 billion deficit.
Matter of fact, it will be only 1.2% of the GDP.
By the way, I said Bush tax cuts.
I guess it's okay to kind of talk that way, but we have to remember that presidents under our Constitution, they have no taxing and spending authority.
Only taxing and spending authority that they have can come from what Congress allows them to do.
That is, if you just read Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution, it says that all revenue bills must originate in the House of Representatives with perhaps the Senate concurring.
And so when people say Bush tax cuts, no, they're congressional tax cuts.
And so, but anyway, what we need to do with taxes in our country, we need to have, we need to follow Czechoslovakia and I'm sorry, the Czech Republic and some other countries.
And what they just, the Czech Republic, they just established a flat tax.
I'm not aware of the amount.
I think it's 15% of flat tax.
And I think that would do wonders for our economy.
And then we should eliminate the corporate tax because the corporate tax is just a kind of indirect way of taxing Americans.
See, because corporations, they don't pay any taxes.
That is, corporations are tax collectors.
That is, if you impose a tax on a corporation, the corporation will do one of three things or all three of them.
One, it will raise the price of the product.
Two, it will lower the dividends.
Three, it will lay off workers.
So the bottom line is that corporations are just legal fictions, and as such, they don't pay taxes.
Only people pay taxes.
And I'm quite proud of the Czech Republic joining the flat tax bandwagon.
I think New Zealand is a recent member, then some of the Baltic states are flat tax entities.
But I believe the flat tax movement in the Czech Republic was led by Vakov Klaus.
He's the president of the Czech Republic.
And let me just tell you a story about Vakov Klaus.
I was very pleased to be the co-recipient with Vakov Klaus at the Foundation of Economic Education's Adam Smith Award.
This was the year before last, and I had a delightful conversation with Vakov Klaus.
And he invited me to come to his country.
He said that Prague is a very beautiful place and other places.
And I told him, I said, Mr. President, I just don't fly commercial anymore because I don't want to go to jail dealing with those silly airport security regulations.
So he said to me, matter of fact, I haven't flown a commercial plane, I guess, about four years now.
And again, I just don't want to go to jail because of stupid regulations.
And matter of fact, what started is the airport security people, I had an eyeglass repair kit in my carry-on bag.
This is about four or five years ago.
And the guy told me, well, you can take the screws, but you cannot take the screwdriver.
And I asked him, I said, that is stupid.
I said, have you ever heard of an airplane being hijacked with an eyeglass screwdriver?
He said, wait here.
And so he called the supervisor.
And the supervisor said, what's wrong?
You know, very huffy.
And I repeat myself.
He said, it's on the list.
You either leave it here or you don't get on the plane.
So I got on the plane that time because the people who had invited me had set up a banquet and spent a large expense.
But I said, that is the last time.
But getting back to this story, I think that Americans ought to demand a flat tax, say 17%.
And matter of fact, I think it should be 10%.
And some people ask me, well, Williams, well, what's so great about 10%?
Well, I say that if 10% is good enough for the Baptist Church, it ought to also be good enough for the United States Congress.
Anyway, but don't allow these politicians to say, well, we're going to fight the deficit by raising taxes.
No, no, no, that's a ruse.
I think what has happened is that relatively low taxes, which could be much lower, are responsible for our booming economy that the rest of the world envies.
And this little recent bump in the stock market, that's no big thing.
And matter of fact, when the stock market goes down, you know what I do?
I view it as a buying opportunity to make more money and to just to grow richer and richer so I could buy some more cars.
Do we have time to go for a call?
Yes, we do.
Let's go to Angela.
How do you pronounce it?
Is that Lagonier, Pennsylvania?
Angela in Ligonier.
Ligonier, Ligonier.
Hi, welcome to the show, Angela.
Oh, I've missed you so much.
Oh, thank you very much.
Yeah, I'm very pleased to get to talk to you and remind your wife how lucky she is for me, please.
Oh, yes, she is.
She is a lucky woman, very lucky woman.
I have a little story to tell about Ms. Williams when you get finished.
Okay, my comment is about a form of gun control as I see it.
I don't know if this is state or national, but it was on our local news the other night about placing a heavy tax on ammunition.
They're blaming it primarily on the fact that there's so much ammunition being used by the military and by the police departments that they don't have enough material to produce enough ammunition.
So they're going to have to raise a hefty tax to be able to defray some of that attempt to provide enough ammunition for soldiers.
That's amazing.
I just think it's nonsense to try to impose a tax on us.
That's just a ruse for it.
But thank you for calling.
Jeff in Champaign, Illinois, if we don't have time to complete your question, we'll ask you to hang around.
Okay.
Yeah, Jeff, we're on.
Oh, I just wanted to bring up gun control laws were originally based in racism.
During in the South, after the Civil War, to keep the black population in their place, as it were, they passed something called the Army-Navy law, which stated if you had a gun other than what was used by the Army or the Navy, which was an extremely expensive gun at the time, you could be actually put to death.
They lynched people.
White people, of course, white people, if they were caught with anything other than the Army-Navy type revolver or gun, you know, they just kind of winked the eye at that.
Well, yeah, see, it's not necessarily a racial thing, although you're absolutely right in your statement.
But Hitler had gun control laws.
And any tyrant who wants to exploit the people, they don't want them armed.
That is, they don't want them to have the ability, as Thomas Jefferson said, that a society needs a little revolution every now and then.
It needs the blood of patriots and the blood of tyrants.
But anybody who suggests that it's all these guns that are causing crime, they're just plain nonsense.
Back in the old West, at a time when everybody had guns, 12-year-olds had guns, there wasn't nearly the amount of mayhem in our cities as there is now.
So, what we have to recognize, folks, that guns do not cause crime.
It's only people that have guns in their hands that are responsible for the crime.
We'll be back after this.
We're back, and it's Walter Williams sitting in for the vacationing rush limbaugh, and we're pushing back the frontiers of ignorance on a number of subjects.
But here's something a little bit light.
Well, I don't know how light it is.
Anyway, there's a veteran counterterrorism detective, and he flunked a drug test.
His name is Anthony Shiafalo.
Anyway, the New York police commissioner, I think it's New York, yeah, the police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, he said, well, you can't have your job back.
And here's the excuse that he used.
I don't know whether the excuse could be a true story.
He flunked the drug tests, the marijuana tests, and he said, and his wife admitted, that she put some marijuana in his meatballs.
And she was tired of his being a policeman.
Anyway, she said that she passed a lie detector test and offered testimony to the toxicologist toxicologist that the excuse was valid.
And so that shows you guys, some wives can't be trusted, but Mrs. Williams can be trusted.
And we've been married 48 years.
By the way, she is so happy, you know, on hot days, she is so happy to see me come home.
Now, we've been married almost 48 years, and so it's not the romantic stuff.
But when I leave the house, I turn off the air conditioning.
And the reason why I turned the air conditioning off, because I'm trying to lower my carbon footprint on the earth.
And she's so happy.
She's so happy when I call her up two hours before I get home and tell her to turn the air conditioning on.
Then there's another story, a great story here that we might want to talk about.
I don't know whether, but you might not have seen it in the news, that Big Mac is 40 years old today.
It's celebrating its 40th anniversary.
And McDonald estimates that 550 million Big Macs are sold each year in the United States alone.
And each one of those, even though the health nuts in our country are against it, but we love it, each one of them is around 500 and some calories.
And you can take, look, folks, I don't worry about calories.
And you know the reason why?
And it's also the reason why I'm so charming and handsome, is that I work out, lift weights, I have a trainer, at least three to four times a week.
And then on Sundays, I go out for a bike ride at least 25 miles, 25 miles on the bike.
And even though I am nearly 72 years old, if you were to look at me, or actually look at the photo on my website, and matter of fact, a lot of guys are jailed.
I get some nasty email from some of you people out there saying, hey, Walter, you ought to take your son's picture off your website or you ought to get a new picture.
That one's 20 years old and stuff like this.
But anyway, because I work out, I stay in excellent shape.
And I am destined to live until I'm 105.
That's what I see in the cards.
And by the way, I remember when Rush, oh, a few weeks ago, maybe a month ago, Rush was on.
I was listening to him.
And you're celebrating EIBs.
What anniversary is it?
19th and 20th year.
And so I said, well, look, when I get on, I'm going to say there's a kind of anniversary for me.
Next month will be my 15th year of subbing for Rush.
Did you know that kid?
15 years subbing.
And I'm the most handsome sub that he has.
But let's take some of your phone calls and let's go to Bill in Los Angeles.
Welcome show, Bill.
I want to congratulate you, Dr. Williams, on being one of the few people in America almost as smart as I am.
Yes.
But in any case, my great-grandfather was a vigilante, a member of a vigilante group in West Texas in the 1860s and the 1870s, when, as you know, west of the Pecos, there was no law, no courts, no marshals, no nothing, except what the people themselves could organize.
And I want to point out the difference between what you advocated and what they did, because what you're advocating is truly a militia rather than vigilanteism.
The difference being that the militia are the citizens, peaceful, honest citizens of the community, organized to defend the community by force of arms, and they arrest evildoers and bring them to justice through the established court system.
Whereas vigilantes take the law into their own hands by organizing their own courts with their own judges and juries, hold their own trials and mete out punishments according to their own verdict.
This is a very different thing than there are times when both vigilantes or militia are justified and necessary.
Well, look, for example, in this recent Newark case, and you had this guy, you had these three students, law-abiding students, they were executed.
And one of the guys that's responsible for the execution, he was out on bail, or he had been relief for child molesting, a rape, and things like this.
And so if you have a militia, as you suggested, and you arrest these people and take them to law authorities, and the law authorities allow them to back out, what do you do?
That is exactly the point.
That's why I say there are times and places in American history where vigilanteism, as I defined it, has been necessary and justified.
For example, in San Francisco at the height of the Barbary Coast era during the gold rush.
And I don't deny it.
In fact, I saw an excellent movie last night on the Black TV channel that advocated precisely that.
It was called Original Gangsters.
Have you seen it?
No, I have not seen it.
But I know that, let me go back.
In some neighborhoods, let's say in Little Italy, in various cities, the Italian people, they don't allow street crime.
They will go and shoot you in your kneecaps.
And indeed, one of the main reasons that vigilanteism, as distinct from the militia, are sometimes necessary and justified is because government is frequently utterly corrupt.
And I can speak to that as a student of American history and from my family's personal experience because my great-grandfather and my grandfather both had a lot of experience during the Prohibition era before with local police, courts, judges, and attorneys who were utterly and totally corrupt.
That's right.
Well, Bill, thanks a lot for calling in and making those points.
They're very, very good points.
Let's go to Buddy in Ocean Springs.
How's it going, Dr. Williams?
Mississippi.
How's it going, Dr. Williams?
It's a pleasure to speak with you, sir.
Okay.
You had mentioned a few moments ago, I guess shortly after you came on about the Czech Republic and the flat tax, and you advocate a flat tax here in America.
And those of us that do understand the fact corporations don't pay taxes, we as the buying public pay those taxes.
Or as stockholders.
Exactly.
I would rather than see a flat tax.
I would rather us implement the national retail sales tax.
I think that's a fair tax to everybody.
And the problem that I have with the flat tax, as most of us, as we're called, fair taxers are called, you implement a flat tax, you still have, unless there's a way that we could absolutely do away with every special interest group, every lobbyist that's in Washington, D.C., and we know that's impossible.
The problem I have with it is the fact that you will eventually end up, because of those special interests, with a tax.
And I would say if it were implemented today, if a flat tax were implemented today, that I would say within the next five to ten years, we'd be back with the same type of tax system or tax code that we currently have, because everybody's going to say, well, you gave a little break to these guys over here.
My group over here needs a little break.
Well, a good friend of mine and former majority leader in the House, Dick Army, he introduced a flat tax measure, and I think it only had one exemption, I think, for, I think, actually two for kids and a home mortgage.
And if you do it legislatively, like you say, well, gee, we need a supermajority either to change the rate or change the exemptions, I would go for it.
Now, here's the problem I have with the fair tax.
That is, if we had a national sales tax or a fair tax, as you explain, without first repealing the 16th Amendment, sooner or later we would find ourselves with an income tax and a national sales tax.
Now, you say, well, what is the probability, political probability of repealing the 16th Amendment?
I say I don't see any chance whatsoever of repealing the 16th Amendment.
So given that we're not going to repeal the 16th Amendment, I think that a flat tax is the superior alternative to the status quo.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
This is Walter E. Williams sitting in for Vacationing Rush.
By the way, by the way, getting back to that last caller talking about the flat tax, from 1787 until the 19 teens, federal spending, except during wartime, was no more than 3% of the GDP.
Now, if federal spending is only 3% of the GDP, then almost any kind of tax system is okay.
And matter of fact, for most of our history, the federal government was run through, they got the revenue from tariffs and excise taxes.
And it wasn't until the 16th Amendment was passed that they started with an income tax.
And an income tax was a direct tax, and they had to amend the Constitution because the founding fathers feared a direct tax.
They were scared to death of a direct tax, such as an income tax.
And so, ladies and gentlemen, I think that the big part of the problem is somehow to get the federal government back to where the founders envisioned it.
And if you want to get an idea of how the founders envision where our country should be and where the federal government should be, read some of the founding papers.
Read the Federalist Papers.
Read some of the statements by people like Madison, who's the father of the Constitution.
And Federalist Paper 45, that's your assignment.
Read Federal's Paper 45.
And the Federalist Papers, ladies and gentlemen, was written by John Jay and Hamilton and Madison trying to convince the colonists to ratify the Constitution.
And Madison explained what powers the federal government had.
And I'm virtually quoting him.
He says that the powers left with the federal government are few and well-defined and restricted mostly to external affairs.
Those left with the people and the states are indefinite and numerous.
Now, if you turn that upside down, you'd have what we have today.
That is, the powers of the federal government are indefinite and numerous.
And so we've walked away from the United States Constitution.
And to give you another example of how despicable today's Congress is, there was an amendment that was introduced by John Sheddeg.
He's a Republican from Arizona.
And it was called the Enumerated Powers Act.
Now, what the Enumerated Powers Act said required is it required that on each spending measure that Congress would vote on or introduce, that the Congressman had to show where it was authorized specifically, where it was authorized in the United States Constitution.
That is, before they could get a spending measure passed or any measure passed, they would have to identify what passage in the Constitution or what article authorized them to do that.
Do you know that bill went down to blazing defeat?
That is, in the United States Congress, they said, well, heck, in effect, they say, well, we don't have to do things according to the Constitution.
We only have to do things where we can get a majority vote.
These are rascals, and the founding fathers, the people who wrote the Constitution, who are responsible for the Constitution and the great benefits that we've derived from the Constitution, if they were to come back, they would spit on all of these guys.
Or at least all except about five.
I can only name about five or list five people in the United States Congress now that the founding fathers would respect.
And just the very fact that something like the Enumerated Powers Act would go down in blazing defeat, this gives you an idea of our Congress.
That is, they don't want to be guided by the Constitution, even though they take an oath of office to uphold and defend the United States Constitution.
But yet, when they get an opportunity, they say the heck with it.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
Yes, that's Walter Williams sitting in for the vacationing rush.
And we have time for another phone call.
And so let's welcome from Los Angeles Joe.
Welcome to the show.
Hi, Walter.
I have a question for you.
How can a capitalist free society read USA, trade with a communist slave society read China?
Well, I don't think it, although it's a communist society, I don't believe that it's a slave society.
But we can always compete with people.
You're suggesting that the wages are so much lower.
We can always compete with people if we're just far more productive, and that's the case.
Right.
Well, if we have a widget that we make for 10 bucks, and they have a widget that they make for one, is it the no, no.
All we have to do is make 200 to their one, and we're far more productive.
I mean, we just have so much capital, so much ingenuity that we don't have to worry about.
Now, I suspect that you're saying, well, gee, let's put some tariffs on some of these countries, like some trade restrictions on countries like China.
Are you suggesting that?
No, I'm just suggesting that all the capital will flow out of our economy to theirs until they're roughly equal.
Oh, no.
No way in the world.
That is, look, if the Chinese want to sell us something for very cheap, then doesn't that make us better off?
Sure.
Of course it makes us better off.
And at the same time, it makes them better off because they have a source to sell their goods, and we have a source of cheap goods.
And the lower the price you can get for anything, the better off you are.
And now, now, what a lot of people will say, hey, you know, the Chinese are not allowing people to be free, so we should have tariffs.
That's like saying, well, if the Chinese don't allow their people to be free, then we should not be free.
I reject such a hypothesis.
Look, folks, we'll be back in the next hour.
And the next hour, I'm going to talk about the environmental movement and why politicians love the environmental movement.
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