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Aug. 24, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:20
August 24, 2007, Friday, Hour #2
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That is absolutely right.
And it is a hard job selling my fellow Americans on the moral superiority of personal liberty and its main ingredient, limited government.
Anyway, let's stick with government.
Now, here's a story that a lot of Americans are just completely unaware of.
And that is environmentalists, with the help of politicians and other government officials, they have an agenda that has cost thousands of American lives and perhaps millions of lives elsewhere.
And you say, oh, Walter, what are you talking about?
These people are just wonderful people.
They just like the teddy bear.
They like animals and things like this.
Aren't they cute?
No.
Let's go back to Hurricane Katrina.
Now, in the wake of Hurricane Betsy, this was in 1965 when Hurricane Betsy struck the Gulf Coast, the United States Army Corps of Engineers, they proposed building floodgates on Lake Ponchitring.
And those floodgates are like those that have been built in the Netherlands that protect the city from the from the, you know, protect cities from the North Sea storms.
Now, in 1977, when the gates were about to be built, the Environmental Defense Fund and an organization called Save Our Wetlands brought a court injunction to block the project.
Now, there's a fellow named John Burlow.
He's at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and he's just written a book about this, How I Know It, named the book as Eco Freaks.
And he points out that the U.S. Attorney General, I'm sorry, the U.S. Attorney Gerald Gallinghaus told the court that not building the gates would kill thousands of people in New Orleans.
But the judge issued an injunction despite the evidence refuting the claim of environmental damage.
So some of the death that occurred during the Hurricane Katrina might have been prevented had these floodgates been built.
They have them in the Netherlands, and it does a good job in protecting cities from North Sea, very, very rough storms.
Now, another environmental favorite, environmentalist favor, is DDT.
They want to eliminate the use of DDT.
They claim that it's harmful to humans and animals.
But however, there's a, according to Burlow and some others, not a single study that has ever been replicated to show that exposure to DDT is harmful to humans.
And matter of fact, in one long-term study, volunteers ate 32 ounces of DDT for a year and a half, and they suffered no increased risk of adverse health effects.
Now, there are many places in the world where DDT was used to get rid of mosquitoes that caused malaria after World War II.
And when DDT was banned, the malaria came back and it's responsible for millions of people becoming sick or dying from malaria, especially in Africa.
But here's how the environmentalists, or at least some of them, see DDT.
Now, there's this fellow, Alexander King, and he's the co-founder of the Club of Rome.
And he said, and I'm quoting him, in Guiana, in Guyana, within almost two years, it had almost eliminated malaria, it being DDT.
But at the same time, the birth rate had doubled.
So my chief quarrel with DDT in hindsight is that it greatly added to the population problem.
Now here's another environmental attorney, Jeff Hoffman.
And he wrote, and again, I'm quoting, malaria was actually a natural population control, and DDT has caused a massive population explosion in some places where it has eradicated malaria.
I don't see, and goes on to say, I don't see any respect for mosquitoes on these posts.
And so many of these people who are against DDT, they're really just against people.
There's another story that many Americans are entirely unaware of.
In 2001, thousands of Americans perished in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.
Now, in the early 70s, when the World Trade Center was being built, the asbestos scare had just started in the United States.
And the builders at that time, they had planned to use something called a Besto Spray.
And this is a flame retardant that adheres to steel.
It sticks to steel.
But however, the New York Port of Authority caved into environmentalists and denied the use of this asbestos.
And an inferior substitute was used.
Now, after the 9-11 attack, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, they confirmed what other experts confirm.
And they said that it's not likely that the World Tower, World Trade Center, would have collapsed had the proper asbestos been used.
It would not have happened.
Now, there are other restrictions on asbestos.
That is, we can't use it in our naval vessels, and it makes the naval vessels more vulnerable to our enemies.
There's another story that people are unaware of.
The Columbia spaceship disaster was a result of EPA's demand that NASA not use Freon in its thermal insulating foam.
Let me give you another story about the death caused by environmentalists and their cronies in Congress.
Congress mandates automobile fuel mileage standards.
They call them CAFE standards.
Actually, what CAFE stands for is corporate average fuel economy.
Now, these mandates made by Congress causes Detroit and other car manufacturers to produce lighter and less crash-worthy cars.
Now, in 2002, the National Academy of Sciences calculated that CAFE standards cause 2,000 additional traffic deaths each year.
In 1999, USA Today analysis of the government and the Insurance Institute data found that since 1970s,
when the CAFE standards began, when they went into effect, 46,000 people died in crashes where they would have likely survived had they been riding in heavier cars.
Now, here's the story, folks.
None of this is news to politicians.
Politicians are fully aware of what I just talked about.
It's just that the environmental extremists, they have the ears of the politicians and the victims don't.
That is, somebody, one of your relatives, if you had a relative killed in an automobile accident, or if you had a relative that died in the 9-11 attack, well, you don't know.
You just plain don't know that that person might have survived, let's say the automobile accident, had it not been for these CAFE standards.
Or that loved one might have survived had asbestos spray had been used on the steel girders in the World Trade Center.
But see, the politicians know this, and they're not going to tell you.
They're not going to tell you at all.
But they have the ears.
The environmentals have their ears.
The environmentalists have their ears.
And we, the American people, don't.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
This is Walter Williams sitting in for Rush.
And by the way, you folks, if you read something that I've written, and if I said something on the previous show that you're concerned about, I welcome you to call in because this is Open Line Friday.
But now let's go to the phones and welcome Chris from Asheville, North Carolina.
Welcome to the show, Chris.
Hi, Dr. Williams.
Thank you for taking my call.
You had mentioned earlier about the 16th Amendment.
Yeah.
And I'd just like to just have just a conversation about that just a moment, if you might.
Roughly 40% of the tax code was written prior that we use today was written prior to 1913 when the 16th Amendment was put as an amendment.
And your call screener asked me a minute ago if I thought the income tax was illegal.
And actually, and I don't think that it's illegal.
I just don't think it is applicable to everybody.
And that what happened with the 16th Amendment?
Tell me, are you saying, is it applicable to me?
It would, perhaps not.
And so you're saying that next year I don't have to pay my taxes and I'll be all right?
There's probably a little bit more to it than that.
But let me go on, if you will.
Now, I just want to know, because if you're telling me that I don't have to pay taxes and Rush audience of millions, we don't have to pay taxes, then if we don't file next year, everything will be all right.
I want to hear about that.
Okay.
Well, then let me tell you about that.
Everything will be all right now.
Everything will be all right.
And nobody will come to my house.
No, sir.
Okay, go ahead.
Okay, let me just make my key points.
I'm waiting for this because it's going to take some study on everyone's part, but I won't take much longer.
The 16th Amendment, what happened with it was there was a decision called the Pollock decision.
Yeah.
That was back in the late 10, you probably know about the Pollock decision.
Yes, I do.
It basically said that everybody was subject to the income tax.
And the 16th Amendment came along, and what it did was it closed the loophole that the Pollock decision had left out there.
So the tax code is based on back into 1862, back to the during the Civil War.
And that was the first time.
The income tax was held unconstitutional in, I think, in the 1890s.
Well, the Pollock decision said that there was, well, the income tax has been wrong from day one because you mentioned earlier that there was no direct tax, and that's mentioned two times in the Constitution.
The founders were so enamored with the reason not to have a direct tax on income that they mentioned it twice.
There are very few things that have been done.
But getting back to what my conversation was when I mentioned the 16th Amendment, I said that, look, if we have a national sales tax, which there's a lot of things going for it that I would like, we should not have it unless we can repeal the 16th Amendment because we'll have both an income tax and a sales tax.
Now, all this stuff I've read a lot of material about people saying, well, it wasn't ratified properly and it wasn't this and it wasn't that.
But the fact of business is that the Treasury says that we are obligated to pay income tax and they have the guns to enforce it.
And so that's all I'm saying.
Well, but the Supreme Court has said dozens of times that it is nothing more than an excise tax.
It has to be an indirect tax.
The 16th Amendment did not make it a direct tax.
And if you look at the book, I think you're wrong on it.
I think you're absolutely wrong.
That is, unless you're prepared to say that next year, all the Americans that have made W-2 income are not liable to the income tax, then you're whistling Dixie.
Well, but that really truly is the case.
Okay, well, then we don't have to pay.
Give it a shot, everybody.
But don't say you got the word from this show.
I am telling you to pay the taxes until we can legally repeal the 16th Amendment.
Let's go to John in Orange Park, Florida.
Welcome to the show, John.
Good afternoon.
How are you doing, sir?
Okay.
You were talking about the environmental lobby and everything and how they've hijacked a lot of our politicians in the U.S.
And you had made a comment about DDT.
DDT, even though it is outlawed in the U.S. and probably will never come back, it is actually still being used today in a lot of third world countries.
Yes, but I understand that, but in many cases, the third world countries are being blackmailed, saying that if they use it, we're going to withhold funds, we're going to do this, and we're going to take other sanctions against them.
Well, I don't know about that.
I know that they use it in South America, especially in Mexico and in Venezuela.
They use it as a spray to get rid of a lot of insects that damage crops.
And a lot of other third world countries, they're still using it for mosquito control and actually going and spraying people's homes and huts and everything on the outside to prevent the mosquitoes.
You know, a very interesting story about this is that Rachel Carson's book, The Silent Spring, that started all this, and it's a lot of bogus stuff in her book.
But anyway, one of her concerns was, oh, what about the birds?
It's killing the birds.
Well, it turns out that in some cases, the lack of the insecticide is allowing these various critters to get a foothold, and the critters are killing the birds.
I mean, so it's kind of a, you know, she was working at cross purposes with her agenda.
But the point is, now I hear some environmentalists say, well, gee, there are other sprays that are just as effective, but these other sprays are far more costly than DDT.
DDT is dirt cheap.
And so poor countries need to have DDT.
Let's go, let's take another call, and let's go to Tom in Baltimore.
Welcome.
Dr. Williams, how are you this afternoon?
Okay.
Okay.
Greetings from the People's Republic of Maryland.
Welcome.
The reason I'm calling, I just wanted to clarify about asbestos in the World Trade Center.
Yeah.
They used asbestos when they started building those buildings.
They used asbestos sprayed on all the way up the first tower that was completed, and the process was stopped halfway up the second tower.
So when the buildings were built, one and a half of them did, in fact, have adequate fireproofing.
Now, in the mid-80s, when everybody was really panicking about asbestos under a law passed by Carter called AHIRA, the asbestos hazard emergency response act, that's when people started ripping the asbestos out of schools.
There was another process called encapsulation to seal the asbestos behind fiberglass, then you would just maintain it and inspect it on a regular basis, which would cost a whole lot less.
But since you're an expert, but what they're using as the substitute for asbestos, it does not have the fireproofing capacity that asbestos has.
What I'm getting to is that when they took the asbestos off all of the exposed beams in the World Trade Center, instead of encapsulating it in the 80s, they never replaced it with anything.
Yeah.
Well, thank you for clarifying that.
But the point is, is that it's not likely, according to this group, this outfit called the National Institute of Standards and Technology, it's not likely that the World Trade Centers would have collapsed and there would have been a smaller loss of life had they not collapsed.
And had they been using the asbestos spray, it would not have happened.
We'll be back after this.
Yes, it's Walter Williams sitting in for a rush, and we're trying to push back the frontiers of ignorance and try to convince my fellow Americans on the moral superiority of personal liberty.
But let's go to the phones and welcome Billy from Columbus, Ohio.
Welcome to the show, Billy.
Well, actually, I'm not from Columbus, but I'm on the road in Columbus, Dr. Williams.
One of the most bogus terms out there, I think, is trade deficit.
I think this is actually a sign of a healthy economy.
You know, if you look at the numbers, if you go back to last time our trade deficit actually really dropped big time was back in 1980.
And our country was in, you know, Reagan was just taking over from Jimmy Carter.
What do you think of that?
Oh, well, I think when people talk about, when people get worked up about a trade deficit, they're saying, oh, look, we buy more from the Chinese than the Chinese buy from us.
And so it turns out that we have a deficit on the current account.
Now, a current account is the goods and ser represents goods and services that are traded.
And so, yes, the Chinese don't buy as many goods from us as we buy from them.
But when the Chinese buy goods in the United States, I mean, sell goods in the United States, well, what do they do with those dollars?
They don't put them in a cookie jar.
They go and they buy bonds, they buy stocks, they buy treasury securities.
And so what that means is that we have a surplus on what's called the capital account.
The capital account consists of stocks and bonds and other money instruments.
And so it always has to balance.
And so when people say, oh, we're buying more from them than they're buying from us, well, I tell people, look, I buy more from my grocer than he buys from me.
That is, I have a deficit on my goods, on my goods account.
And so, or they, or the, and the grocer, he buys more from the wholesaler than the wholesaler buys from him.
And so I think that just robust trade is the is a sign of a good economy.
There are some economies that are in the doldrums and they have trade surpluses in the current account.
And so isn't another way of looking at it?
It's like that dollar, Phil, is actually an IOU for the goods and services of the United States.
And if China doesn't buy something from us, and if they don't invest that dollar back in this country, then they have to buy from somebody else who's going to return that dollar to them.
You're 100% right.
Now, what we would love as Americans, what I would love as Americans, you know, the Chinese and the Japanese, they work hard and sell us cars, they sell us clothing, they sell us all kinds of goods, and they get these dollars, and they just take them back and they just worship these dollars.
They put them underneath the mattress.
Now, here's what we could do as Americans.
We could just sit out on the beach and enjoy ourselves and have the world send all these goodies, and we can have one or two people making up these little pieces of paper that we call dollars.
That's right, because if those dollars don't come back to this country, whatever we bought with them, it was free.
That is absolutely right.
Now, are you in the trucking business?
I'm a long-distance truck driver.
Oh, my goodness.
What roads do you travel?
Well, I just came out of the worst damn traffic jam on Route 70 west of Columbus.
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
Now, what I do, I ask you guys to be nice to me.
I go on I-95 a lot.
Well, you heard the expression, watch out for the other guy?
Yeah.
I'm the other guy.
And I'm watching out for you.
But I love a trucker under the following conditions.
Now, sometimes I'm in the western part of Pennsylvania, not too far.
Pardon me?
That's where I'm from.
Yeah.
Butler.
From Butler?
Oh, my one.
Good.
So you're on the Pennsylvania Turnpike a lot, aren't you?
Well, actually, no, my company doesn't like paying the polls.
Okay.
Now, here's what I, here's, I think, the ideal use of a truck driver, particularly at night, because, you know, there are a lot of deer on the highway that run across the highway.
And what I do, I find a truck that's going fast, and I follow him and let him take the deer if a deer comes up.
Yeah, they're nothing more than blacks with long legs.
That's right.
That's my opinion, too.
Yeah, I call them just big rats.
But thanks a lot, Billy, for calling in.
Let's go to, let's see, who can Dayton, Ohio.
Dr. Williams.
Yes.
Thanks for having me on.
Say, you mentioned something earlier about how corporations don't pay taxes, but rather consumers and stockholders pay taxes.
Yeah, it's an issue in economics.
I totally understand it.
I agree with you.
What I would like to point out is nobody says the plain fact of that little bit of information, and that is the government lies to us every day.
Every politician that opens his mouth and says, we got to tax the big corporation and make them pay their fair share is lying through his teeth because he knows that the consumer is the one that's going to hold it.
But a lot of people go for this.
They say, oh, isn't he a wonderful politician?
And again, he's not going to tax me.
He's going to tax corporations.
Totally understood.
And I know why politically it sells, but that's why I think rather than just saying, just tell it what it is, they're lying to you.
I would like to hear more of that.
And you mentioned that a key component of personal liberty is limited government.
And I would submit that a more important key component of personal liberty is personal responsibility.
Well, that's right, because when people can't take care of themselves or they are not willing to take care of themselves, they ask for a government to come along.
And when government comes along, it means fewer freedoms.
So we could limit government all we want, but until people get it through their heads that they're responsible for their own conditions and it's not the other way around, then the government will just continue to grow.
That's absolutely right.
And matter of fact, when people say this whole issue about the incidence of taxes, and I always point out that it's only people who pay taxes, not legal fictions such as corporations, I say, well, what would you say to a politician?
He comes up to you and says, well, Mike, I'm sorry, Phil, I'm not going to tax you.
I'm just going to tax your land.
Well, you'll say, well, my land doesn't pay taxes.
See, land, only people pay taxes, the person who owns the land.
And so people would, they would be alert to a politician running that kind of trick on them, but they're not alert to politicians saying, oh, we're going to take corporate profits or we're going to tax corporations.
And unfortunately, Americans fall for that.
But not just Americans.
I think people all over the world.
They say, let's get big business.
And because if we tax big business, there'll be more money for the government to have, more money to give us, and we won't have to shell any money out of our pocket.
And they're just not really seeing the light of the day.
But thanks a lot for calling in, and we'll take some of your calls after this.
It's Walter E. Williams back again, pushing back the frontiers of ignorance while Rush is on vacation.
Hey, look, folks, getting back to the environmental issue.
Global warming has become a big ticket item in the eyes of its supporters at stake or it's a lot of goodies.
For example, Congress plans to spend $6.7 billion in the name of global warming that will be spent in various politicians' home districts.
For example, and both sides of the aisle are in on this.
Dan Hobson, a Republican from Ohio, he secured $500,000 for a geothermal demonstration project in his district.
Congressman Schiff from Burbank, Democrat from Burbank, he got $500,000 for a fuel cell research in his district.
Now you have Global warming can justify almost anything.
And this is why the people who are involved in the global warming hysteria, this is why they attack anybody who is a skeptic.
They call them deniers, you know, to kind of put them in the same bailiwick with Holocaust deniers.
For example, Congressman Dingell says that he wants to repeal the mortgage deduction, the tax, you know, the mortgage tax deduction on your mortgages if your house is over 3,000 square feet.
He's introducing a bill.
Say, if your house is more than 3,000 feet, he calls them McMansions.
We're going to disallow your mortgage tax deduction.
He wants to put a 50-cent tax on gasoline.
Look, with global warming, these politicians can do anything, control our lives.
For example, I believe it's Holland.
I could be wrong, but it's one of those countries in the neighborhood.
They say if you have a barbecue, you have to get a barbecue permit, and it costs you, I don't know, I think like $5 or $10 to have a barbecue because you're emitting pollutants in the air.
Look, folks, first of all, increasing scientific evidence is emerging saying that this global warming stuff is all a hoax.
I mean, of course, yeah, the climate has changed this century, but the man-made causes of global warming is they're highly overstated.
I think that one scientist says that we could emit five times the amount of carbon dioxide in the air, and it would not be very significant.
That is mankind, because mankind just does not have that much influence over the basic parameters of the earth.
And then kind of going back to this whole energy stuff, there's something I collected because I knew it would come up today on the show.
But we have a whole lot of energy in our country.
That is, if the government get out of the way, it turns out that between Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming, there's enough shale oil there.
The Department of Energy estimates that there's enough shale oil there.
I think they say it's one and a half trillion barrels there to provide gasoline for our nation for the next 500 years.
And scientists working at various private labs, they have found ways to heat the rock so that the shale oil is recoverable.
And they guess that if the oil prices remain above $30 a barrel, that it will be a profitable undertaking.
So all these people creating fear in our country, the reason why they want to create fear is so that politicians will get more power over our lives.
And I don't want you people to fall for it.
Let's go to the phones.
Let's go to Mike in Baldwin, Michigan.
Welcome to the show.
Glad to be on.
Thank you.
Dr. Williams, I'd like to present a different perspective on your blaming CAFE standards for the 2,000-plus extra deaths in small cars.
You know, I read the paper and I see these accidents.
And let me tell you who initiates the cause of these accidents.
It's trucking drivers in big gas-guzzling cars that can't control their cars that cross the center line.
It's the courts that let these people continually drive their gas-guzzling, uncontrollable cars that cross the center line.
Generally, people in small cars are a little bit educated.
They get better gas mileage.
They stay on their side of the road.
They're more careful.
And if you really want to get away from the money.
Well, wait, wait, wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
Now, you can't call this show and try to trick us with that.
So you're saying that all these deaths from accidents come from drunk drivers and people with big cars.
And the little teeny cars are not in accidents at all.
No, I'm talking about who initiates these accidents.
And all you have to do is read the paper and see who crosses the center line.
Who's driving like a maniac?
You know, if we were all driving small cars with very little inertia, the severity of accidents would be a lot less.
So what are you proposing?
I'm proposing CAFE standards for trucks.
I'm proposing the courts get down on people who cause accidents.
Wait, wait, wait.
Now, I'm going to tell the audience, I thank you for calling in, but I'm going to tell the Rush listeners that you are just calling, and you're just playing a prank on us today, aren't you?
I believe I'm making quite a lot of sense.
The truck would be allowed lighter.
Look at who caused.
Okay, wait, should the cafe standards be applied to military vehicles?
If they run faster, if the severity of accidents is less, if they can get to where they're going faster and use less fuel, I'm all for it.
Okay.
And so what would you do with the Abrams tank?
I'm here to talk about accidents in the United States right now.
No, but I don't see any accident on the road.
I'm sorry.
Okay, well, thank you for calling in.
We had to take a break, and we'll be back with more of your calls after this.
Walter Williams, I was trying to maintain a very serious show until that last call, but so let me just continue in his spirit.
I was looking at a cartoon a couple days ago, and it reported that Lana Falcons quarterback, Michael Vick, he's going to have a plea bargain.
And the reason on the cartoon, it was showing that why he's going to settle for the prosecutor's plea bargain.
And it was like a picture, and it showed in the jury box, all dogs.
And I thought that might explain why he was going for a plea bargain.
Let's go to the phone.
Let's go to Ross in Carlsbad, New Mexico.
Excuse me.
I'm sorry.
Thank you, Dr. Williams.
Your last caller's comments are just ludicrous.
He wants to stereotype all drivers of large cars, even had the gall to call them uneducated, and the source of not only pollution, but accidents.
And I'd like to reference a recent arrest of none other than Al Gore's own son in California driving a friendly car, a Toyota Prius, at speeds over 100 miles an hour.
When they arrested this fine young man, he had illegal drugs in his possession.
Clearly an educated person, a friend of the environment.
As we know, the rest of us are haters of the environment.
And it's just ludicrous.
That man's comments underscore the elitist attitude of the liberal left.
It just drives me crazy.
Oh, that's absolutely right.
And I just kind of let him go on just to demonstrate to the audience the elitist left and their vision of the rest of us.
Now, it's my vision that people ought to be able to buy any car that they want.
And some people with large families, they need a station wagon.
They need an SUV.
Now, this guy who called in, he would want maybe a mother with five or six kids to have two or three Prius.
I mean, she couldn't take them all out at once.
And people, I think that people ought to be free to choose.
That's what this nation is about.
That is free to choose and not have people interfere with peaceable voluntary exchange.
That is, the only role for government, in my opinion, is to prevent fraud, to prevent violence when a person has not initiated violence, and to otherwise protect us.
But see, government is failing, particularly at local level, of doing its basic functions.
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