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Nov. 1, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:08
November 1, 2007, Thursday, Hour #2
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And we are back, second hour now up and running on the Rush Limbaugh program, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, another excursion into broadcast excellence behind the golden EIB Mike in the Attila the Hun chair.
I am Jason Lewis, glad to be filling in for Rush once again.
Always a treat to work with the guys, and always a treat to try to fill the big shoes of the big guy.
Rush back tomorrow for open line Friday, so stay tuned for that.
In the meantime, let me just tell you how to start each day with a positive outlook, my friends.
Here's what you do.
Go to your computer, create a new file folder on the computer.
Name the file folder, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Drag it to the recycling bin, empty the recycle bin.
Your PC will then ask you, do you really want to get rid of Hillary Rodham Clinton?
You firmly click yes, feel better instantly.
Tomorrow we'll do Nancy Pelosi.
See, that's how to start each we've been talking about Hillary and uh her waffling on the big issues.
You know, I I guess she's trying to waffle.
She's trying to have it both ways, of course, because the other guys are so far to the left.
I mean, John Edwards wants to you know, if you rescinded the Bush tax cuts for anybody making over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, which it seems Barack and Edwards and Hillary want to do, you know how much money you raise?
Have any idea how much money you raise?
About fifty billion dollars a year.
These guys are all proposing trillions of dollars in new programs.
You're gonna have to have the mother of all tax hikes, the Charlie Wrangle plan that's gonna raise the top rate to forty-four percent, gonna destroy the capital markets by raising the capital gains rate, and the double taxation of dividends goes up.
I mean, Wrangell, at least is being honest, we're gonna have to really hit people with tax, huge tax increases, which have never worked, and they never will work, because people work for after tax return.
And if you want more of something, you subsidize it.
If you want less of something, you tax it.
And right now the Democrats are hell bent on taxing work savings and investment.
If you do that, you will get less of it.
And it's happened every time in the 1920s and the nineteen sixties and the nineteen eighties and the Bush tax cuts of two thousand and three when you cut those rates and you increase the after tax return on work and capital formation and investment.
Oh, surprise, surprise, we get more of all of that.
You know, let me tell you something.
People say, Well, what uh what about the deficit if you cut tax?
I don't care about the deficit.
I care about the total amount government spends.
Doesn't matter how they finance it, whether they inflate, which they may be doing now, or the Fed may be doing now, whether they inflate, borrow, or tax, it all comes out of the private economy.
Only low taxes, which bring on a strong dollar because America is a good place to invest.
I mean, if you want a strong dollar, get low taxes and stable money.
But but only that will offset the government spending.
If you raise taxes to cover every deficit in the future, and that's why Republicans have to quit being these tax collectors for the welfare state.
The Democrats proposed a trillion dollar program.
The Republicans say, oh, well, we want to be fiscally responsible.
Let's raise taxes to have a balanced budget.
That's insane.
It's bad policy and it's bad politics.
Any particular deficit caused by tax reduction is good.
Any deficit caused by increase in spending is bad.
You get the picture.
I mean, this you know, and the reason that is, by the way, is when you have lower tax rates and you have a flourishing economy, the savings pool dwarfs the deficit.
The encouraged to save and invest dwarfs any money the government borrows in the economy, and by the way, it's minuscule now because the Bush tax cuts have thrown off so much revenue that the deficit is now about one percent of GDP.
Nothing more than a Democrat talking point.
You notice they're not talking about it much.
Because tax cuts work.
And let me just remind you, they work for everybody.
They work for everybody.
The dirty little secret, really since 1979 and the beginning of the Reagan era, of which we're still in.
Thankfully, we're still not back to the pre-Reagan tax rates, where the top marginal tax rate, believe it or not, was seventy percent.
Now, who on earth would work for thirty cents on the dollar?
You get to that final marginal tax rate and you say, No, it's not worth it to me, especially if you're wealthy.
And let's be honest, the wealthy people create the jobs.
Poor people don't open factories.
So this is a tenant of classical economics.
People call it supply side economics.
It's classical economics.
Going back to Smith and Ricardo or the 19th century John Stewart Mill.
It doesn't matter.
It always works this way.
And yet you get people.
The Learjet liberals, who for one reason or another, want to kill the goose that's laying the golden egg.
Warren Buffett is back at it again.
The last time we heard from Warren, Warren, I should say, was when he was making the wrong bets on the dollar, I think.
But he was talking about we've got to have a huge estate tax because, gosh, it's not good enough that we tax you when you earn the money.
We tax you when you invest the money.
We tax you when you consume with the money.
By God, we've got a tax you when you die.
Except you're not taxing the deceased with the estate tax.
You're taxing the seven or eight or ten children or beneficiaries left over.
And they're not rich, time and time again.
I love the way these guys that can get around the estate tax with foundations.
I love these investors where the estate tax helps them buy up small businesses devastated by the estate tax.
You know, the dirty little secret in all of these rich moneymen in favor of a big estate tax is it helps them buy companies cheap.
It helps them acquire, oh, I don't know, drive-through ice cream retail operations.
Because families have this, they get hit by the estate tax, they have to make a fire sale, and in comes the corporate buyer who says, Oh, you know what?
Corporations don't have an estate tax.
When one of our principals dies, somebody on the board or the CEO, one of our officers, there's no it doesn't trigger a tax event.
We've got perpetuity.
But when a sole proprietorship owner dies, why all of a sudden death is a taxable event.
I think Steve Forbes had the best line on this.
No taxation without respiration.
So Warren Buffett wants a big estate tax.
Now he said the other day, I think it was just a couple of days ago, one of the richest men in the world said, I want to pay more tax.
I should be paying more tax.
We've tilted the tax code towards the rich in favor of the rich and away from the middle class.
And therefore, I need to pay more tax.
Now this is rich, in so many words.
Warren, who's stopping you?
Think of the philosophical underpinnings of this nonsense.
I want to pay more tax for what?
To help the poor?
I mean, government now has been reduced from keeping us free to making certain it's the largest charitable clearing house in the world.
You know, when the framers were sitting around or the great philosophers in the age of enlightenment, they weren't sitting there thinking, you know, uh I think we want to instill a government.
You're sitting there in a society where you are born in absolute freedom.
There is no organizing government in your society.
You are in the wild.
And a group of you get together and say, hey, I got an idea.
Let's form a government, give them a monopoly on force, and then have them tax and regulate us.
That's a good idea.
How about you?
That's good.
It's good.
They didn't do that.
They formed a government for one purpose to keep the big guy from clubbing the little guy over the head to prevent force and fraud.
That's it.
And all of a sudden, in the modern era, starting with the progressive movement reaching its zenith with the new deal and now going right over the edge with the great society.
Government is not seen for protecting property.
Government is seen as an agent of redistributing property.
It's seen as the largest charitable clearing house the world has ever known.
National defense, pfft, 20% of the budget.
John F. Kennedy spent 49% of the budget on national defense.
We spend 20%, and people say it's too much.
What's the other 80% going for?
Income transfer payments.
And Warren Buffett says we need to pay more on those.
It's not fair.
We're need to pay more.
But we need to help poor people.
Government is a charitable clearinghouse.
Well, Warren, pay.
No one is stopping you from writing a billion dollar check to charity instead of paunting it off on a foundation so you can get estate tax loopholes.
Hey, now the moral underpinnings of this, as I said, are so bankrupt.
If in fact, government is a charitable clearinghouse and you got a poor person out there and you and Warren are walking down the street and Warren says to you, look at this poor person.
He needs help.
We need to both chip in and help this poor person.
And I say, well, you know, Warren, I've got other familial obligations.
I'm not quite as wealthy as you.
I want to keep my own money for myself, my family, and my community.
You know, that's what we call that economic liberty.
What's Warren's response?
Well, then I'm not doing anything either.
Hell of them.
Well, you say, Jason, what are you talking about?
He why is it that these learjet limousine liberals who are so wealthy clamoring for tax increases?
Why are they waiting for us to do it?
You don't we don't have to pay the tax for you to write a checkout.
You want to pay it?
Do it.
Go ahead.
And if you don't, and you're waiting for me, what does that say about your real concern for the poor?
I mean, if you're saying I'm not going to help poor people unless you do, I don't think the poor person's gonna buy on to that.
I don't think he's gonna that's gonna be very convincing.
No, I'm all for this.
We ought to have everybody ought to have all the rich liberals out there from Mr. Rubin on Wall Street to Mr. Buffett in Omaha, pool their money and solve the deficit themselves if they think it's a problem.
Pool their money and help the poor if they think it's a problem.
Instead of clamoring for an elimination or for an increase of the estate tax, which hits small business, small farmers.
You know, we ought to quit subsidizing farmers and just get off their back when it comes to the estate tax.
All of these things, it hits the small businessman, it doesn't hit the corporation.
Quit clamoring for higher estate taxes, higher income taxes.
And by the way, even when you include Social Security taxes, I know the liberal left love to say this.
Well, the the rich have 21%, top one percent of 21% of the income in the country.
We've got an income inequality problem.
No, we don't.
The top 1% of income earners in the United States of America now pay 39.38%.
39.38% of the total income tax burden.
Is that fair?
The top 1% have 21% of the income, but they pay 40% of the federal income tax burden.
That doesn't sound like the rich are getting off scot-free.
And when you add in Social Security taxes, it doesn't make a difference.
This is beware of this, friends.
This is one thing your liberal friends will tell you time and time again.
Well, Lewis, you're not including the payroll taxes.
Rush, you're not including the payroll.
Let's include the payroll taxes.
You include the payroll taxes, and the top 1% still pay about 24% of all taxes when they have about 21% of the income.
They still pay disproportionately more of the tax burden, including payroll taxes, than they have an income.
Who on earth is suggesting we don't have a progressive income tax code?
It's far too progressive.
We ought to start to seriously be talking about tax reform, whether it's a consumption tax or whether it's a flat tax.
But we got to disabuse ourselves of this notion that the more you work, the more you save, the more energy, talent, and drive you have, the more the government should penalize you with a higher tax rate.
That is an anethema to all things American.
1-800-282-2882.
I'm Jason Lewis, in for rush.
Don't go away.
More coming up with your phone calls on the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
1-800-282-2882.
That's 1-800-282-2882, the contact line for the Rush Limbaugh program.
I am Jason Lewis, once again sitting in for the gray one.
He'll be back tomorrow, as I said.
I want to touch quickly before we get to the phones on what I think is the real crisis in Republicanism, if you will.
And a caller last hour talk about this and saying why are Republicans so um so hateful of Ron Paul?
And I don't agree with Paul on a number of issues either, but why don't we embrace it?
What happened to the big tent?
Why is it that conservatives are always always told that every time you get a lefty Republican, and I don't care who it is, I remember Lowell Wiker.
You gotta be the 11th commandment.
We gotta never say anything ill about Republicans.
We've got to embrace them, no matter how moderate, no matter how much of a Republican in name only they are.
Well, what's wrong with embracing the right?
Why does it only go one way?
Why does the Big Ten only have one door on the left side?
And this is the fundamentally the crisis.
As the Democrat Party has gone off the Fabian socialism deep end, if they've gone further and further to the left, making a mockery of Scoop Jackson and John Kennedy.
Sadly, I'm here to tell you the Republicans have followed.
Now, they're still the lesser of two evils, but they're drifting leftward.
And I'll say something I mean, when you've got to modify conservatism, you know, compassionate conservatism.
It was always compassionate.
Liberty's always been compassionate.
You don't need to put a modifier on it.
You don't need a kinder, gentler conservatism.
It's always been kind and gentle.
If you believe in freedom and liberty and individual rights and constitutionalism and private property and capitalism and all the good things that made this country great.
So we've had this experiment with big spending, big government conservatives, which is an oxymoron.
We had that experiment.
We had it from about two, you know, since quite frankly, the late 1990s.
Remember the budget battle in 1995 when Clinton uh Clinton threatened to shut down the government?
The Republicans lost that particular battle.
They I'm not gonna say they chickened out, but they lost it.
Clinton outsmarted them.
Ever since then, the idea of really drastically reducing government, which is now pushing three trillion dollars.
Actually, that's not fair.
It's only two point seven trillion, the current budget.
It's been gone.
Nobody talks like Reagan anymore.
Government isn't the solution.
Government is the problem.
Can you imagine somebody saying that?
Instead, we've got this the political class, the consultants.
I was reading an article in Newsweek a few weeks back by a former Bush speechwriter by the name of Michael Gerson, I believe.
He was blasting the conservatives for being too reliant on free markets, for being too obsessed with individualism and self-reliance.
This guy was a speechwriter.
Fast forward to two thousand and seven.
And you've got Messrs.
Sonny Purdue, governor of Georgia, who heads he heads up the uh Republican governors association.
You've got the chairman of the National Governors Association, Governor Tim Pilani of Minnesota.
You've got Arnold Schwarzenegger, and according to the politico, these characters are going to get together and wrest control of the party's rebranding campaign away from conservatism.
I mean, look at what Arnold Schwarzenegger has done.
Health care for all, going back on spending cuts and tax cuts, a global warming crisis.
Indeed, when Governor Pollenny of Minnesota was in Washington last summer, he seemed at loss to explain how Republicans in Washington or anywhere could still be arguing over the reality of global warming.
These are the guys that say, look, my polls tells me that the suburban soccer mom wants more money for government schools.
My polls tell me people are concerned about the environment.
They want more subsidies for renewables.
They want to go after the pharmaceutical companies and they want to go after big oil.
Well, then what's the point, folks?
If the political party isn't a means, a conduit to the end of conservatism, what is the point of the Republican Party?
In fact, when Governor Pollen in Minnesota, my home state, invoked or created our very own climate change advisory group.
She didn't know this.
We can do it.
We can solve global warming right here, right here in Minnesota, I should say.
We can solve it.
We don't need the rest of you.
We can do it.
And that's why we have a climate change advisory group who's going to look at taking away the mortgage interest deduction because we don't want those big homes spewing out all that energy or consuming all that energy.
We're going to look at more mass transit.
We're going to look at carbon taxes, gasoline taxes, you name it.
Because we're going to solve it.
Republican Governor Tim Pollenny at the April 20th meeting of the Minnesota's climate change advisory group, quote, it looks like we should have listened to President Carter.
He called us to action and we should have listened.
So we now have ourselves in a bit of a pickle.
People are way ahead of the politicians on this.
We're benefiting from their tailwind.
Other visionaries deserve credit too.
Many who have been dismissed as goofy, they were right, not goofy.
Energy and climate issues are intertwined.
We should not spend time on voices that say it's not real.
This is the new rebranding of the Republican Party.
Folks, if you want to look at 2006, and you want to understand why the Republicans lost, it's quite simple.
And Russia's alluded to this as well many times.
We spent money like drunken sailors, and that wasn't fair to drunken sailors.
We had open borders.
We had big educated Ted Kennedy education Plans.
And we blurred the distinction between what it means to be a conservative Republican and a Democrat.
If you get into a bidding war with Democrats, folks, voters will vote for the real thing every time.
What would Reagan do ought to be the Clarion Call.
Let's rediscover those Reaganite roots.
Let's do it together, shall we?
That's what's going to be the future of the GOP, not this new rhino moderate image.
All right, 1800 to 282 2882 back with me, Jason Lewis, the man with the widest stance in radio.
Let's go to Bob and Deerfield Beach.
You're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi, Bob.
Hi, Jason.
Great show, great topics.
I uh just all I can tell you is my firm belief as our grandparents came here to work hard and uh sacrifice so their kids could go to a decent school and their kids would have a chance to give their kids a better education.
That's the American dream.
We've been losing it the last several years for many reasons, but mankind is a work in progress, and so is democracy.
And unfortunately the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are both turned into businesses.
They're representing certain causes that seem to be self-interested, not really interested in the American dream.
That scares me quite a bit.
What do you mean well, they're both mean spirited, they're both more interested in grandstanding and making points and getting the public to go, yeah, yeah, yeah, rather than actually accomplishing anything.
Well, give me give me an example of a specific issue upon which both parties are um I I guess exploiting without really shedding any light.
Well, on the war, the rack the the war in Iraq, the president has no plan, and the Democrats have no plan.
Well, there's a vigorous well what the plan is the surge, and we're now seeing casualties reaching some record lows.
Some would say the surge is even working.
There's a vigorous debate on this whether or not we ought to have a presence in the Middle East and try to establish a pro Western uh moderate Arab democracy that would be friendly to the United States.
The Democrats say no, the Republicans say yes.
What what's I mean both sides are presented?
Right, and I prefer to listen to moderates because they probably listen to both sides and are willing to come up with more realistic case that either side.
You know, I don't understand Bob, with all due respect, I don't understand what that means.
Are you what what are you moderate about?
Are you a moderate about somebody stealing money from you?
You know, don't steal fifty bucks, but you can steal thirty.
No, no, no, no.
What are you moderate about?
That's an extreme.
I'm talking about realistically, let's say the surge works, and that's oh that'll be a wonderful thing, and let's let's believe it will.
Then what's the next step?
In other words, we're not discussing realistically what steps need to occur over the next 18 months, 24 months.
Not not publicizing them, but understanding if this happens, then we'll do this.
If this happens, then we'll do this, and this is how we're going to reach conclusion, and that will be how we leave.
Let me paraphrase, let me paraphrase.
Well, but let me paraphrase Churchill here.
You know what the fog of war means?
Of course.
The fog of war means every great plan you ever had once the shooting starts, is antiquated, obsolete.
Forget about it.
That's what war is.
So you can't sit here and say, okay, we're gonna do this and they're gonna do this.
We're gonna do this.
No, no, no, no, no.
I understand.
But the point is, at what point do we say, okay, the surge is working?
Gee, it's working really well.
Oh, it's working incredibly well.
Well, that what does incredibly well mean?
And what do we do?
You want an exit strategy.
And there it is probably will not be something as clean and neat.
What we're going to have to do is make a judgment and say, gosh, there are a lot of autonomous forces now in Iraq, for instance, a lot of the tribal forces, a lot of Sunnis, Shias, Kurds, who are in fact taking control of their own neighborhoods.
The political institutions are gaining traction, and we think all other things being equal, to our best judgment, we can start a drought drawdown, which I think you'll see in a couple of years.
But it's not going to be this epiphany from heaven, say, aha, we've won.
It doesn't work that way.
No, absolutely not.
Everything is incremental, and that's the point to try to understand if it turns one way, exactly what increments we have to um uh put put forth.
All right, give me g I mean look, I I under I agree with you that people are dissatisfied with both parties, but I don't think it's due to to a lack of moderation.
My goodness, the Republican Party is all about moderation these days.
We've tried I mean, I don't know why Democrats and moderates are so mad at the GOP.
They the the increase in the budget 50 percent from 2000.
We have a two point seven trillion dollar uh uh uh federal budget.
We've got Ted Kennedy's education bill, which a lot of states are upset with.
We've got we had a a de facto open borders policy, if you will.
W why are Democrats or moderates mad at the GOP?
They ought to be endorsing them.
It's pretty funny you say Democrats and moderates are uh uh angry at the GOP when I say Republicans and moderates are angry at the Democrats.
So there's two ways to look at this.
Moderates are supposed to understand both sides and then come up with something that they think is reasonable from either extremist, they are extreme.
What's the company with the colour?
Give me one example of what is extreme about the Constitution might be a good question, but what's extreme about conservatism?
What's extreme about conservatives about when is when it becomes selfish righteousness, and when it represents only protecting your own and not concerning yourself.
Here we go.
The selfless liberal.
See, folks, this is what a moderate really is.
A moderate believes that you should be property of the state, and that you don't work for yourself, that a healthy self-interest is what wasn't about what this country was built upon.
It was, it was all about what this country was built upon, Bob.
We are not slaves to the state.
Remember, my friend, taxes and this notion that we ought to sacrifice ourselves and our families and our communities for a larger good.
The state was a little bit was a little bit reminiscent of what a guy well, that might be a little bit inflammatory, but I mean Germany was a social estate.
Coming out of the Weimar Republic, and Hitler came to power.
Germany was talking about we're going to get rid of those those nasty minorities and we're going to expropriate what they have for the greater good.
It is a great good democracy is a great No, it is not.
Or it's a nation of individuals which become the greater good.
This is not a collective enterprise.
You missed you missed that one.
I think that was another country that or another empire that perished when the Berlin Wall fell.
Well, that's that's right.
That's right.
Much of what you say is very accurate.
It's just some of these things are said so so divisively that we can't bring everybody in to come to a co to come to some compromise on the issues.
I'm more than willing to compromise if it if it expands my view of liberty.
But I'm not sitting here willing to compromise you want to raise taxes, you know, uh X amount, and we'll just cut the difference, we'll raise them this amount.
That is not that is exactly the sort of compromise that is defeating the GOP right now.
But I'm agreeing with you.
My problem is I own a small business and I'm tax I'm taxed on profits, which I think the government should allow me to continue to hire more people and make more profit, not tax my profits so I can't hire more people.
That's what's happening these days.
And I'm in the middle class.
I'm striving to be in the upper class, and I want to be able to pay more taxes.
I tell you what, I can't.
I'll have to pay more taxes.
I look at it as a necessary.
Well, you know what, my friend?
You know what, my friend, I gotta let you go, but I'll tell you what, if we had a flat tax, you would pay more money the more you earn.
What is so onerous and indicative of a of a voracious government appetite is you not only pay more tax, you pay a disproportionately higher rate.
Why is it when national income grows, GDP grows, and we had uh resounding growth in the last quarter, that government revenue grows faster.
You want to know why?
Because you're shoved into a higher bracket.
That is outrageous.
That is government greed.
There's nothing good about that at all.
If you want to pay more taxes, number one, you can pay them.
But number two, make more income in a flat rate or a consumption tax, and you'll pay, if you consume more, you'll pay more in revenue.
But there's absolutely no reason under the sun that the government should get a disproportionately larger share as you climb the ladder to success.
That is anti-the-American dream.
In fact, in every other facet of life, when you make more money, your expenses become less as a percent of your revenue.
Your expenses for groceries, for heat, for a mortgage.
If you make more money, those expenses are less as a percent of revenue.
Only when it comes to taxation should the expenses be higher when you make more.
That's absolute insanity.
It's not good economics, it's not good policy, and it is an ethmo to what the American dream ought to be.
I got to move, let's go to Lawrence and St. Pete.
You're up next on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Hi.
Mega Ditto's Mr. Wright.
Thank you, sir.
Good to hear from you.
Uh same here.
Uh um I was in Charlotte the same time you were uh put there.
And um, don't you miss the smart growth crowd in Park's Helms.
Oh my goodness, my friend.
We could talk about smart growth from Portland to LA to Charlotte, uh the twin cities, everywhere.
This you know, I want to I let's explain to people what smart growth is if they don't know.
A bunch of new urbanists, a nut of big city uh uh urban renewal types realize that people are leaving Charlotte, they're leaving Minneapolis, they're leaving the center city because they don't like high crime, high taxes, and bad schools, and they're beside themselves.
Lawrence, they say, Well, we can't change our policy, so here's what we'll do.
We'll create a crisis and we'll call it urban sprawl.
Yeah.
And then we'll put up urban growth boundaries and we'll tell everybody we're not going to develop the suburbs, we're gonna force you in back in the city, live in a high-rise Soviet-style condo next to a light rail station, and that's what's going on.
And have pretty shiny trains.
Last highway bill, 286 billion, fifty-two billion were siphoned off for mass transit.
Fifty-two billion.
Here's an interesting one.
The uh Tampa partners or council visited Charlotte uh last week or two weeks ago uh to see how Charlotte's getting it right and doing it right.
And they neglected Charlotte uh partners, uh neglected to say that there's a recall on the ballot next week.
There is a recall to stop the uh sales tax down in the Queen City for that.
You know, you bring up a great point, and it's another uh one of those points under the radar screen.
And people, you know, people down in Dubuque or people you know out in Morganton or down in some small city or uh anywhere out west in Greeley, Colorado, it doesn't matter.
They they have to know that their federal gas tax money is being siphoned off.
One fifth of every increase in the federal gas tax since nineteen eighty-two is being siphoned off of these mass transit schemes, which failed to relieve congestion, which are fiscal black holes, which work about as well as the freeway through Central Park, and yet that money, which could, you know, could go back to them and lower federal gas taxes.
You know, I'm one of these I'm one of these radicals here, Lawrence.
We have built the interstate system.
Why do we still need to send our federal gas tax money to Washington?
Why don't we give it back to the states in block grant form or let them keep it and they can up maintain the the freeways, they can build new roads, they can do it themselves.
Well, that's too much common sense.
I know.
Very frustrating.
Good to hear your voice.
I gotta go, Lawrence, thanks so much for the call.
I'm Jason Lewis, in for Rush Limbaugh on the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
You know, we could do a whole hour on smart growth.
I mean, this is this uh euphemistic title for uh kind of this the urban land planners uh running roughshod over property rights.
And it's you know it started in Portland, Oregon, and Richard Riordan uh kind of uh well, I wouldn't say he went down the entire smart growth road because LA is such high density anyway, but I believe he said once the biggest mistake I ever made was the rail system in LA.
It just doesn't work.
Uh it requires massive subsidies.
There isn't one light rail system in the country that moves as many people as one freeway lane mile.
And by the way, it costs about fifteen to twenty million, depending on where you live to build a freeway lane mile, costs about forty to fifty million for a light rail line.
And yet it's all the rage in all these wannabe cities.
We're gonna be just like Manhattan, we're gonna take the subway in.
And you know, Manhattan's an island.
Got a few people in it, pretty high density, they live skyward, they don't spread out.
And meanwhile, we are literally, why are while our bridges are collapsing, we are diverting billions upon billions to these inefficient mass transit lines so that the new urbanists and the smart growthers and the environmentalists say, look what we're doing to fight the automobile, to fight urban sprawl.
The whole little scheme is doing for the suburbs what they did for the city, ruining it.
In fact, the Bible of the smart growthers is a book by David Rusk called Cities Called Cities Without Suburbs.
How utopian.
Matt in Londonbury, New Hampshire, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with me, Jason Lewis.
Hi.
Jason, mega ditto see you in a rush.
Thanks for having me on.
Uh I just wanted to get back to uh uh Warren Buffett and a couple of comments on that.
Um I think he's a smart man, he has a great mind for investing, but uh not much else.
Um I know that uh for myself, one of the uh the promising things of of at least attempting to become wealthy is uh all the great things that you can do with that money.
Um I think this is another example of of Warren pretty much uh admitting that he's not capable of uh uh of doing good on his own with the money he's given it uh No, no, not excellent point, But not only that, it's a tacit well not so tacit admission that apparently you didn't deserve the money.
Because in in a in a market economy, there's only one way to get wealthy.
Providing something of value that other people want.
So if I provide something, whether it's uh, you know, a jet engine, a great piece of engineering, a great piece of music or whatever, I've provided something, a vaccine.
How's that?
Should somebody that creates a life-saving vaccine, do they get paid too much?
No, I'll take the life saving vaccine, thank you very much.
They've already created wealth.
The money is just the flip side, unless, of course, you think you haven't created anything.
Yeah, I don't know what it is that he uh expects the government to do with his money, but I don't know why he can't do it on his own.
He could start his own charities, donate to more charities, or even uh create some new businesses to employ uh the these people that he feels so sorry about.
You know, when it comes to when it comes to his obsession, and Bill Gates' dad for that matter, there's their horribly misguided and really punitive obsession with raising the estate tax and making certain it doesn't phase out as it well should.
Um Mr. Bubbett at one point owned an insurance company in his conglomeration, and insurance companies love to sell insurance products to pay what?
You buy an insurance company and you wrap it around an estate to pay the estate tax.
So I mean there are lots of and then you've got, you know, picking up companies at distress prices because the family has to liquidate to pay the estate tax.
You got lots of not so clear motives here.
I'm not going to call them ulterior.
Uh people can dis agree to disagree.
But what I I don't understand, uh I I think it's gotta be guilt.
It's gotta be guilt that how did all this money come my way?
But I I will tell you, you know, if I pay somebody if I pay somebody a lot of money for a product that I value, I don't think I'm getting ripped off.
I'm not envious of the fact that they've got money and I've got their product now.
It's an even exchange.
Yeah, I think uh, you know, people put a lot of part in the pun uh stock in individuals like Warren Buffett and George Surrells because they've been so successful, and uh they they seem to think that because they they've done so great in one area that they can that that they're they're right and everything else that they make comments about in uh well government has become so intertwined in every business that you can no longer rely on the biggest of businesses to be reliably pro-free market.
Businesses, in fact, try to figure out ways constantly to get the government to to uh give them benefits or carve out a monopoly or do this or that.
Wall Street's famous for this.
More of Wall Street money is going to Democrats than Republicans, and now they're demanding that the Federal Reserve create fiat money to bail them out of the of the bad uh investments they made in the subprime market.
So that's one thing that we've got to get people to understand.
Big business, especially is much more aligned with big government and Democrats.
You want to take a look at the global warming issue and why some of the big utilities are on board on this, they've already made investments, alternative fuels and cap and trade investments that they think will pay off if they get the government to latch on.
So it becomes a very incestuous uh bargain.
Uh the last bastion, perhaps, of the free market conservative businessman is a smaller business community, midsize mid-sized business community, it seems.
Matt, thanks for checking in.
Let's uh quickly go to Bry Byron in Lansing, Michigan.
I'm sorry, I got a break, but Byron, we'll come right back to you right after this short pause on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hey, what's this I see up on the Lake Superior uh towards Duluth Way, they've convened another environmental conference, and they say, in fact, I'll read you the headline uh from a story in Minnesota in the Minnesota newspapers, scientists.
Humans are the greatest threat to Lake Superior.
What was I saying last week?
Environmentalism is essentially anti-human, which is one of the reasons the GOP shouldn't be embracing it.
Modern day environmentalism.
We're all environmentalists, really, in the grand scheme of things, but we want the earth to be better for us, but not the new breed of environmentalists.
Humans are the greatest threat to Lake Superior.
One scientist said invasive species in the lake, so such as zebra mussels and the like continue to be a problem, but quote, he warned that human pressures are greater.
Double quotations.
We are still the worst enemy of the aquatic community.
Close double quote quotations.
Let me tell you something.
We are the enemy of the aquatic community.
I didn't know they had a community.
Do they have a little townhome or do they have a clubhouse where they all get together and sip pina coladas, maybe vote?
Maybe a little golf club for the fish in Lake Superior.
We are the worst enemy of the aquatic community.
Folks, when they start throwing around terms like community, look out.
Your private property is in danger.
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