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March 7, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:40
March 7, 2008, Friday, Hour #2
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Hey, I've got it.
In the spirit of equality, in the spirit of equal distribution of resources, I've got an idea as to Brett Favre's retirement.
The great Green Bay quarterback, by the way, he announces officially yesterday, Brett Favre of the Packers retiring.
Today in Minnesota, it's a state holiday.
I don't know if they're connected or not, but a lot of people are happy in Minnesota today.
Welcome back.
I am Jason Lewis.
Second hour now up and running in for El Rushbo.
Don't forget RushLimbaugh.com.
As always, in the meantime, we will keep things in force in the Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies as we persevere onward.
Anyway, it's rather interesting because if you make an analogy between sports in this particular case and the Democrats' idea of economics, which might be an oxymoron to boot, you can see it's clear what we have to do.
You take all of those awards, all of those records that Brett Favre accomplished before he retired, and you redistribute those to every second-string quarterback in the NFL.
And of course, on an equal basis.
You do it on an equal basis.
I mean, because everybody has a right to the same sort of achievement.
Isn't that the idea?
We're going to tax the rich more.
We're going to regulate so some big business doesn't have an advantage over the lowly labor unions.
We're going to even the playing field.
Well, let's do it with all of those NFL records that Brett Favre set.
Everybody in the NFL right now as a quarterback is going to get a proportionate share of those records.
Favre, of course, will have his reduced in the name of equity.
Well, you can see the absurdity of that.
There's an old analogy out there for many, many years about teachers, of course.
You score 95 on your test.
Somebody else scores 55.
They take 20 points from you.
You give 20 points to the kid that scores 55, and you both have 75, and we're all equal.
You know, that really, the idea of equality has to have some nuance to it.
We are only equal in the Western tradition.
We are only equal under the law.
And by that, I mean governments should never, ever, ever be allowed to discriminate.
All of the invidious discrimination, all of the horrors in society in the world can be traced when one man has power over another.
That's called government.
Equal application under the law is the only equality we need to worry about in a free country.
The rest of it is bunk.
The rest of it is we are not equal.
There is an aristocracy of merit, as Thomas Jefferson once said, a meritocracy.
That's what governs America, where you can climb as high as your abilities can take you.
And if you don't get that high, or you don't want to work that hard, then your station in life is set as well.
Why talent and energy and initiative should be punishable by an outdated tax code is beyond me, were it not for the politics of envy and the class warfare.
And that's literally what liberal politicians live off of the unconscionable notion that since they have power, you can vote for me, in effect hiring me to take something that doesn't belong to you from somebody else and give it to you.
That's the Democrat economic philosophy.
Sadly, the philosophy of a few renegade liberal Republicans these days.
In fact, I wasn't going to do this, but I'll bore you with a Minnesota story for just a second.
Last year, and remember, I only bring this up because this article in the New York Times today, the Senate Democrats hope for a majority, not seen in 30 years.
They want to get past the filibuster.
They want to have a filibuster-proof majority in the U.S. Senate.
So ostensibly, if you had a Democrat president, if you had a filibuster-proof, more than 60 votes in the Senate for the Democrats, the Democrats would be in total control of the nation's politics of Washington, D.C.
And Republicans have 23 seats to defend this cycle, five left vacant by retiring incumbents.
Democrats have just 12.
So the Democrats could expand their majorities in the House.
They could have a filibuster-proof Senate.
And conceivably they could have a Democrat president.
What's going to happen?
Well, let me give you a microcosm of that.
Here in the People's Republic of Minnesota, the Democrats won overwhelming victories in 2006 based on the, really it was right down the ballot on the profligate spending of the Republican majorities in the U.S. Congress.
It kind of gave a bad eye to all Republicans everywhere because Republicans betrayed their conservative base by spending like Democrats.
They were going to change Washington.
Washington changed them.
You've heard all the clichés.
So the Democrats had a big victory in Minnesota.
They won the House of Representatives, the state house here.
They've got a veto-proof Senate majority now.
What happened?
Well, last year, the state of Minnesota had a $2 billion surplus.
The Democrats spent the surplus and voted to raise taxes $4 billion.
$4 billion.
They authored a bill to raise the Minnesota income tax to put it at the highest income tax rate in the country.
Stand back, California.
We're coming after you.
Well, fortunately, through a few gubernatorial vetoes by Governor Poleny, we just got by with spending the surplus, which really isn't.
It's kind of a Pyrrhic victory if you think about it.
We had a $31.5 billion state budget in a state of only 5 million people, and we spent another $2 billion.
And that was considered a conservative victory.
Well, this year they get in there with even greater power, if you will, greater momentum.
Last week in the state of Minnesota, a $6.6 billion tax increase.
But here's the kicker, and here's the lesson.
The lesson is one.
That's what's going to happen nationwide.
You're going to see the largest tax increase in history.
If the Democrats win big victories this fall, they win the presidency.
First of all, you're going to see Washington, D.C. have their own member of Congress so that federal employees can vote to tax the rest of us for more money for, well, federal employees.
Neat trick.
That's going to happen.
The Democrats will let the Bush tax cuts expire.
Charlie Wrangell will get his largest tax increase in history passed.
The American family will be out.
The average American family will be out $1,500.
Capital gains taxes will double.
Dividends taxes will triple.
That'll be good for the stock market.
And the American corporation will continue to move offshore because right now we have the second highest corporate income tax in the country, second to Japan.
Look out, Japan.
We're number one if the Democrats get their way.
We're going to tax the oil companies.
What happened in Minnesota, where in the face of a $2 billion surplus, we spent it and now we've raised taxes $6.6 billion is going to happen in Washington on a much grander scale.
But here's the other lesson.
The governor here vetoed this tax increase last week.
It's a sales tax increase, license fee tax increase, and a gas tax increase.
Massive.
The governor vetoes it.
The House overrides it.
The state senate up here is veto proof, but the House wasn't.
They had enough Democrats to override a veto.
In the House of Representatives in Minnesota, they needed the aid and comfort of six renegade liberal Republicans who sided with the Democrats to override the veto and raise taxes in Minnesota.
The other lesson here is liberal Republicans are not our friends.
They are not to be countenanced.
They are not to be tolerated.
How can you possibly defeat the enemy, as Rush says so eloquently and correctly, if in fact you have people in your camp who are giving aid and comfort to the enemy?
No other organization in society would allow this.
No business would allow people selling secrets or aiding with their competitors.
No sports team would allow it.
Nobody.
But the Republican Party, insecure about conservatism far too often, says, well, we've got to have a big tent.
Got to have a big tent.
Remember when the Democrats took Congress in 06, Nancy Pelosi said, here's what we're going to do in the first 100 hours.
We're going to have six big votes.
We're going to put price controls on a free market when it comes to pharmaceutical companies.
We're going to tax the bejebras out of the oil companies.
That's a good energy policy, don't you think?
We're going to increase the labor cost of small businesses by raising the minimum wage in a careless way.
Another example locally that you can extrapolate nationally.
Representative Jim Ramstead of Minnesota, long a liberal, long a Sierra Club advocate, long a mental health parity advocate with Paul Wellstone, voted on all six votes with Nancy Pelosi and against the Republicans in Congress.
Now that's bad enough.
But Ramstead has announced his retirement as a member of the U.S. Congress, and it's a swing district.
So what are the national Republicans doing?
You got it.
Trying to talk him out of retiring.
To which I ask, what for?
If the GOP does not disabuse itself of these pro-life liberals, of these pro-choice liberals, of these environmentalists, of these populists within their own ranks, they will never ever offer the voters a clear choice.
They will never be a governing majority.
They are so afraid of being in the minority for a session or two that they are willing to throw principle to the wind and get in bed with the Democrats in some form of perverse Dick Morris triangulation strategy.
You want to know why conservatives are upset today?
I just described it.
Six liberal Republicans undercut the Minnesota Republican Party, undercut the taxpayer of Minnesota.
And if there's six here, there's many more in Washington.
Just look at the U.S. Senate and some of those Republicans.
I don't need to name them.
You know them.
And I don't know why we've got this death wish in the GOP.
If you keep listening to your enemies, if you keep listening to the New York Times, if you let the Sierra Club educate the country on global warming, well, naturally, the polls are going to reflect a concern about global warming.
But part of being a great politician is not following the polls, is not looking at this and saying, oh, I've got to modify my view.
As the Gibber used to say, part of being a great politician is moving the polls.
Somebody presented a poll once to Ronald Reagan when he was president where the vast majority of Americans disagreed with his view.
He didn't say, oh, that's it.
Let's change our view.
He said, well, or as Reagan would put it, well, well, we'll just have to educate them.
That's leadership.
That's leadership.
And that's what the GOP needs.
I'm Jason Lewis, 17 after the hour.
Your calls on this Open Line Friday coming right up at 1-800-282-2882 on the Rush Limbaugh program.
And here we go back with Minnesota's real anchorman, in for America's real anchorman, Jason Lewis, in for Rush Limbaugh on this open line Friday.
Glad to be covering the Northern Command for El Rushbo.
He's back on Monday.
In the meantime, back to the phones we go.
Augusta Main and Bob, you're next.
First up, this segment, I should say, on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Hi, Jason.
Thanks for taking my call.
I am thrilled.
The reason I called was that I've watched McCain, I'm a 65-year-old conservative, and I have watched McCain for over 20 years stick his fingers up our nose and grandstand with his liberal friends on the other side of the aisle.
And he does not have my vote.
I'm not sure that he's going to get it.
I mean, if he does, he's going to have to work awfully hard at it.
And what I want the Republicans to do is I want them to find their way.
And I think it would be easier for them to find their way if rather than having a Republican liberal in the White House who has the bully pulpit of his party to have a liberal Democrat in the White House.
Here's the problem.
You've got so many people, and you're right, you've got so many people who view politics not as a calling or a vocation, but they view it as a lifestyle.
They literally are the political professionals, the consultants, the party hacks, you name it.
They don't care about cause.
They don't care about ideology.
They don't care about changing the country.
They care about wins and losses.
And anything you have to do to win is just fine by them, which is the problem.
Sometimes, sometimes you need to lose an election in order to avoid losing your soul.
That's essentially where I am.
What good does it do to win if we're going to govern like the other side?
That's right.
Now, what could he do?
I mean, here's the problem, I think, that once again, that you represent.
Would it not be worse if Hillary or Barack got in there?
I mean, that's what people are telling you.
I think if we look at it and look at the possibility, the possibility is there.
But I look at it from the standpoint of if the Republicans are to find their soul and get that back, it's got to be much more difficult if their own party is in that White House overriding them, as it were, all the way along the way.
I mean, they don't have the ability to fight as well as they do if someone from the other party, I'm willing to let them stand back and lose that White House for a short period of time if they get back to the Reagan-esque principles that put them there in the first place.
Well, and it's just not the executive branch.
I mean, the Republicans' majority in Congress are the ones that really blew it.
I have two rhinos up here.
I should say you do.
And the people that came in with Bush 43 need to be held accountable.
The Michael Gerson speechwriters and all of those people that are now represent the evangelical left who disdain Reaganism, who disdain real conservatism.
There is a real fight going on for the soul, the heart and soul of the Republican Party.
And I do believe it's between, Bob, people like you who have faith in the principle, the idea that political parties should be a conduit to a more important end, the end being conservatism, that we believe in limited government.
We believe in low taxation.
We believe in enumerated powers and federalism and all the things that make us conservative.
People don't believe that.
Many liberal Republicans don't believe, not just in that, but they don't believe America believes in that.
Therefore, if you're insecure in your own party's philosophy, you have to reach out.
Whereas I have more faith in the American people.
I think you do too.
I think it's a philosophy that can be sold with vigor if you're committed to it.
And you've got to be committed to it.
That's the bottom line.
And I don't think many in the Republican Party are committed to it.
So we're a party of know-nothings in many ways.
And we could go the way of the Whigs if we don't watch it.
The Democrat Party is very, very effective in demanding some sort of fidelity towards their overriding philosophy, which, of course, is socialism and expanding government.
The Republicans are not.
And until they get that back, they are not going to be a government.
You know, here's the bottom line.
If they tell you that, gee, we don't have enough people in our party, we can't afford to throw anybody overboard, as a moderate governor once said.
Well, wait a minute.
We went down the road of Republican liberalism.
We went down the road of Rockefeller Republicanism.
It's never worked.
It didn't work for Gerald Ford.
It didn't work for Nixon.
It certainly didn't work when the Republicans took control of the House and Senate and had the majority, even with the Republican president.
They spent money like Ted Kennedy at an orgy.
I don't know how we'd spend money at an orgy, but you get the drift.
The point is, Republican liberalism doesn't work electorally either.
Anyway, Bob, I understand you're angst.
Kurt in White Bear Lake, Minnesota.
You're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
How are you doing, Jason?
Good, Kurt.
How are you?
Oh, hanging in there.
Hey, you're doing a great job for the master in there.
Thank you, sir.
Say, you touched on something a little bit earlier, talking about how commodity prices might be falling and kind of related that to the supply and demand of the market.
And I'm just wondering if there isn't something more at work here, like the erosion of our manufacturing economic base that's causing the market not to bear the prices that they once did.
You know, we're shipping so much of our stuff over to China that, you know, I'm just kind of wondering if there's just not the money there to support the prices we once had.
Well, I don't think so.
A couple of points.
Number one, manufacturing output as a percentage of GDP has not gone down.
So you've got fewer people doing it, to be sure.
But if you take a look at the manufacturing output of the United States as a percent of our gross domestic product, it has not dropped precipitously.
And the other point, which seems to be lost on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, is that you can't decry both a trade deficit and outsourcing because they are opposites.
You can't have a trade deficit where you're importing more goods than you are buying.
So you've got dollars floating around in the international market.
Those dollars come back, and they come back for a Toyota plant in Tennessee.
They come back for a plant owned by another company in Texas, a foreign company.
Well, why isn't that considered manufacturing in the U.S.?
Well, because we don't own the manufacturing plants, and is that the direction we really want to take our country into is having our facilities owned by foreign nationals.
Well, think about it.
Think about that.
Now, think about what you're saying there.
What you're saying there is that the United States is a great place to invest.
And there is a demand for dollars, albeit the dollar's weaker now.
There's still a demand to invest in the United States by foreign companies.
And that's a bad thing?
I'd rather have them owned by our own people, to be honest.
What happened to all those companies owned by the Germans at the outset of World War II?
They're gone.
Well, what did the United States do?
The United States took them.
They exappropriated them.
It's not a threat back after this.
Hey, and welcome back once again, everybody.
Greeting conversationalists across the fruited plain.
It's me, Minnesota's Mr. Wright, in for El Rushbo.
He will be back on Monday to take over the reins here on the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
My pleasure to sit in for him while he's taking a couple of well-deserved days off.
I forgot to get this story at the top.
Let me throw it out there now because this one's a hoot.
I was kind of joking about Brett Favre and how we should redistribute his NFL records just for equity's sake, the way we redistribute income through our tax code.
Think about this.
The University of Wisconsin is now mulling over whether students from well-off families, people that earn more because they produce more in most cases, should pay higher tuition to subsidize lower-income peers.
The Board of Regents is debating the issue in Wisconsin as part of a wide-ranging discussion on the future of tuition and financial aid.
Now get this.
They're going to base the price of this overrated product.
I'll get to that in a moment.
They're going to base the price of tuition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, otherwise known as the People's Republic of Madison, on how much you make?
I want you to ponder this for a moment.
Can you imagine if any other enterprise, other than a government-run one, of course, were to base the cost of their goods and services on ability to pay?
Walk into your favorite car dealership.
Hey, I like that.
I like that SUV there.
I drove it.
I love it.
How much is it?
How much do you make?
Well, for you, it's 50 grand.
For you, it's 35 grand.
Walk into your grocery store.
Eat some milk, loaf of bread.
How much do I owe you?
How much do you make?
Oh, you make that much.
Well, you, the milk is $6 a gallon.
You only make, oh, for you, the milk is only $4.
Why don't we price our products that way?
Because in America, the idea of capitalism and freedom, and remember, our revolution was an economic revolution.
And economics is just the moral dimension of liberty, or I should say the economic dimension of liberty.
The idea of free markets, the idea of earning money and not having to give it to the king or to government, that is the economic dimension of freedom.
What I'm getting at here is these issues aren't economic issues.
They're moral issues.
If you don't have the right to keep the fruits of your labor, you're not free.
It's no different than the right to free speech.
It's no different than the right to be free from illegal searches and seizures.
By the way, I get a kick out of that one.
Why do we have the Fourth Amendment?
Every civil libertarian out there says you can't go in there without a warrant.
We can't spy on terrorists without a warrant.
Why?
What is the barrier there?
The barrier is private property.
You can't enter my house without a warrant.
Now, why?
Because it's private property.
I thought liberals didn't care much about private property.
Private property is the barrier between you and your freedom and the state.
If you lose private property, you lose your freedom.
We fought a great civil war about this, where a certain group of individuals were not allowed to keep the fruits of their labor.
Now with this ever-progressive tax code and basing tuition on the ability to pay, they're enslaving us all.
In 1765, when the Crown put on the Stamp Act, when we had the import duties on tea, the coercive and intolerable acts to enforce those, the colonists were revolting about economic liberty, about freedom.
The ability to get rich.
And the idea of growing wealthier means that all of your expenses become a smaller percent of your income.
Why is it the taxes shouldn't be any different?
Why is it the more you earn, the higher tax bracket you're forced into?
Why is it that the top 1% of income earners in the United States of America pay 40% of the federal income tax burden as much as the bottom 95%?
Is that a manifestation of freedom?
Is it free when the University of Wisconsin contemplates on gouging even further people who happen to support the University of Wisconsin with their taxes?
I mean, get this irony.
The people ostensibly making the most money in Wisconsin are paying the highest taxes, much of which goes to the University of Wisconsin.
Now they're being gouged for the tuition rate.
And that's another story.
This whole idea that college tuition is never ever faulted for price gouging.
They will haul the oil companies.
They'll haul the pharmaceutical companies to Capitol Hill in a New York minute if the price fluctuates.
College tuition is one of the greatest ripoffs in America today.
I'm talking about public colleges.
But private colleges have their own problems too, including political correctness.
But tuition in America has gone up 35% from 2001 to 2006, adjusted for inflation.
That's according to the college board.
That's faster than gasoline, faster than food.
And yet, the government keeps subsidizing these universities, these bastions of liberal political thought, where they bring in old left-wing terrorist groups or founders of left-wing terrorist groups as professors.
Pell Grants, they keep going up.
State aid keeps going up.
Universities sitting on billion-dollar endowments.
You know, you got most universities sit there on these billion-dollar endowments and then tell taxpayers, oh, we got to raise tuition because the state government isn't giving us enough money.
Well, why don't you tap into your endowment?
Well, because we don't want to.
They'll give you some sort of deflective, dissembling tactic like, well, the endowments are allocated for specific purposes, hogwash.
They could get around that.
They could ask for endowments for lowering general levels of tuition if they wanted to.
They don't.
They're feathering their own nest.
I mean, you're going to spend $100,000 to get your kid through college so he can get a degree in sociology.
You'd be better off taking that $100,000, putting it in a single premium deferred annuity, keeping it until he's 62 and he retires more than a millionaire.
Look, this is coming from a guy who spent a lot of years in undergraduate school and graduate school.
In fact, my freshman year was the toughest three years of my life.
But the point here is, we never talk about how colleges routinely gouge their customers, how universities game the system.
We only talk about private sector business that funds these universities, how convenient.
In Middletown, Connecticut, here's Mike.
You're on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Hey, Jason, how you doing?
Doing well.
You know, I've listened to all these boneheaded pundits trying to explain why Barack Obama's losing blue-collar whites.
Well, there's a perception, because I saw all my old union buddies last week.
There's a perception that Obama and his wife are somewhat anti-American.
Her statement about not being proud of the country and whether it's true or not, him not putting his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance.
Well, you got to be careful.
Some of this stuff is urban legend.
I understand that, but that's not ⁇ that's where it's hitting with these union guys.
There were 10 of them.
I was in the union hall, and every one of them was parroting the same thing.
But Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton goes overseas, denounces America in so many words, along with Al Gore, denounces the incumbent president in so many words, talks about America not leading the way on global warming, on being a renegade state and all of that, and we need Hillary.
How is that any different?
And why do the unions support Hillary?
I understand that, but he's getting tagged with this.
That's all I'm saying.
It's not just one or two people or just the union guys.
It's other people who are Democrats, too, who are saying it to me.
So you don't think race has anything to do with it?
I think it has less to do with it and more to do with this perception.
When she made that comment about not being proud of the country, I think that really turned off a lot of blue-collar whites who were supporting him.
For the first time in my life, I'm proud of the United States.
I understand.
And she's followed it up with another sort of slam against the country.
Yeah, there's a real problem there, but if you, you know, Democrats have literally been doing this for a career since Vietnam.
Their whole idea has been bashing America.
That's why they love the U.N. That's why they continue to coddle left-wing terrorists.
That's why they love open borders, anything that dilutes our Western tradition, private property, capitalism, the rule of law, common law, is to the benefit or is to the good in their eyes.
So I don't think Barack Obama has a monopoly on this.
Anyway, I understand your point.
I think you're accurate, but I think it also applies to Hillary and a whole lot of Democrats.
I'm Jason Lewis in for Rush Limbaugh.
You're on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Yeah, well, you bet.
I think we ought to haul these boards of regents, the college administrators up in front of your local state house, go to your statehouse representative, demand a stop, a stop to this price gouging of college tuition.
Don't give them more money.
Don't give them the third-party payment.
The more government gives these colleges and universities, the higher they jack up the tuition rates.
Give you an example.
Consumer price index from 1978 to 2006, it's gone up 3.1 times.
It's gone up three times.
The growth is three times as high as it was in 1978.
College tuition at public universities, eight and a half times as high as it was in 1978.
Much higher than prescription drugs, new vehicles, unleaded gasoline, milk, you name it.
And yet, these bastions of liberal progressive thought are never held accountable for their very own price gouging.
I wonder why that is.
In Fair Hope, Alabama.
Tucker, you're next on the Rush Limbaugh program with me, Jason Lewis, Minnesota's Mr. Wright.
Hi.
Hey, Jason, how you doing?
I'm doing well, sir.
How are you?
I'm doing pretty well.
I wanted to add to your economic argument about the foreign-owned companies doing work here.
I'm down across the bay from Mobile, and this thing this week is the Air Force granting Northrop EADS the tanker contract.
They're going to assemble those planes here in Mobile, and that's going to create 2,500 jobs, manufacturing jobs, which are technical, high-skilled, well-paying jobs.
The auxiliary jobs are going to spin off that in Mobile or quite an impact, plus the suppliers around the Southeast that will be affected by that.
But you've got Nancy Pelosi out saying, well, this should have gone to Boeing.
This should have gone to Boeing.
And the bottom line of the whole thing is the Air Force is getting a better product because the KC-130 air tanker is a better product than what Boeing had offered for the same bid package.
Well, of course, it's amazing how markets work that way.
People desiring to get the best product for the cheapest price, everybody benefits.
That's why it's a voluntary exchange.
And Milton Friedman was right.
There isn't really no such thing as a trade deficit because if we purchase more imports from another country, those dollars then are in the hands of the supplier.
Well, what do they do with those dollars?
The dollars are no good over there.
They have to come back to America.
And as long as America is a good place to invest with high real rates of return, i.e. low inflation, low tax rates, good business environment, the dollars will come back and they'll employ people in Fair Hope.
They'll employ people in Texas, in Tennessee.
The worker doesn't care if he's getting a check from Toyota.
That's right.
Actually, I'm not glad to get a check.
And on the national security angle, again, the riskiest investment any country that has, let's say, ill intention towards the United States can make is an investment in the United States.
Because if we declare war, God forbid, we simply take their property.
We've got it here.
So there really isn't.
I happen to be a bit of a hawk on immigration, but I happen to be a traditional liberal, small L, liberal before Roosevelt destroyed the term, meaning pro-liberty, on trade.
Trade is good, which is why states trade amongst one another in the United States.
If you really don't like trade, then quit buying Florida orange juice.
Grow it yourself.
You know, if you really don't like trade and some foreign country creates a vaccine that will save your life, don't buy it.
Don't buy it.
Trade is good.
It elevates everybody's income by allowing people to specialize in what they do best.
And when you allow people to specialize in what they do best, total output is larger for both sides.
Now, the real danger right now is, and this is where the trade deficit could have some ramification, is then this ridiculous attempt to talk down the dollar, this ridiculous attempt to say we ought to have a weak dollar for trade advantage, is going to lessen the rate of return on people investing in the United States.
Because when they go to the exchange markets, it takes more Euros now to get the dollars.
So what will happen is if the Democrats get in office, they raise taxes.
If the Fed keeps inflating, all of a sudden those dollars in the international markets at the money center banks won't want to come back here because investing in America won't be a good place because the taxes on business have gone up, the taxes on capital have gone up, the dollar is worth less.
Then you do have a problem with a collapsing dollar.
And then you do have a problem with, quote unquote, a deficit in that context.
Anyway, thanks for the call.
Rich in Nutley, New Jersey.
Welcome to the program.
Hi.
Yeah, how are you doing, Jason?
I love you're filling in for a rush.
You know, if Nutley, New Jersey is not the capital of New Jersey, it should be.
Yes, it should.
Right.
Because of the way we vote over here.
Well, the other people vote.
Well, because, you know, the capital of New Jersey is filled with nuts.
I got it.
But anyway, that's been used many, many times anyway.
I'm a Goldwater Republican.
I've been conservative since that time.
And the gentleman that called and said he doesn't want to vote, we should let the other party get in there and make the mistakes, and that will allow the Republican Party to refine itself.
That's not going to work.
They're not going to refine itself.
You're always going to have the liberal Republicans unless we make some kind of laws.
They can't be in the party, which we're not going to do.
So how would you like to have a legal or Obama select our next two or three Supreme Court judges?
I mean, it would be just awful.
No matter how bad, no matter how bad McCain is, he's better than the others, too.
Who gave us David Souter?
Oh, I know, I know, but still.
Who gave us Anthony Kennedy?
Who do you think Hillary or Obama will give us?
True, but remember, when the filibuster was going to be taken away from the Democrats, who sided with the Democrats?
I know, I know.
The gang of 14.
Here's what conservatives are asking people like you.
What assurances do you have, Rich, that McCain won't make a deal on immigration with the Democrats, won't go forward with his global warming policy, won't make a deal, now get this, on judges that can be confirmed.
Because the Democrats will be feeling their oats, and they're going to tell John McCain, you need to reach across the aisle on these judges, because if you send us up an Anton and Scalia, we are not going to confirm them.
And John McCain likes bipartisanship.
On all these issues, there simply is no assurance that Mr. McCain, so far, will do the right thing.
Now, I'm not saying he'll do the wrong thing, and I'm not saying he's equivalent to Barack or Hillary in every sense, to be sure.
But where conservatives are uncertain right now is you go write down the issues, as we did before, on his vote on the tax cuts, on global warming, on campaign finance, on immigration, on waterboarding, on judges, on the estate tax.
He's been in lockstep with Hillary Clinton.
That is not comforting.
He needs, here's all I'm saying today: it's up to John McCain to do something about this.
It's not up to conservatives to swallow principle once again and vote for someone they're not enthusiastic about and who might not share their values.
I'm Jason Lewis.
We'll take a quick pause back after this on EIB.
Well, well, well, speaking of the education monopoly, a California appeals court ruling today clamps down on homeschooling by parents without teaching credentials.
Shockwaves across the state this week.
Estimated 166,000 children as possible truants and their parents at risk of prosecution.
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