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April 7, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:23
April 7, 2008, Monday, Hour #2
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Hi, folks, how are you?
Greetings.
Nice to have you with us, Rush Limbaugh, the Supreme Commander of Operation Chaos.
By the way, those of you who uh among the early purchasers of Operation Chaos Gear at Rushlimbaug.com should be receiving your merchandise very, very soon this week.
We got a head start, couple days head start on the original shipping.
It went out on the second, actually the third rather than the uh went out Thursday rather than Friday, so uh you should be on the lookout if you haven't yet purchased, just go to Rush Limbaugh.com and get caps and get t-shirts and bumper stickers, uh, combos of of those things too at www.rushlimbaugh.com.
Here's the phone number if you want to be on the program today, 800-282-2882, the email address L Rushbo at EIB net.com.
Uh I want to go back to Todd who called from Los Angeles in the last hour.
I I meant to say during my answer to him about what'll happen if the Clintons steal the nomination and get it.
He was upset that Fast Eddie, uh Rendella Governor of Pennsylvania was saying, we don't care about the delegate county, we don't care about the popular vote.
We don't care about the electoral vote, we're just gonna do what we have to do to win.
And uh if we can win, no matter how we do it, it's justified, he said.
And of course, this rattles the Obama supporters.
I'll tell you what, folks, if you go to some of these left-wing blogs out there, there is sheer unadulterated hatred for the Clintons now in the Democrat Party.
At some of their blogs, and I guarantee you this is this is something that's happening throughout the party is uh beyond just the fringe kooks.
What I am learning is something I always knew.
What I'm having confirmed is something I always knew.
This party, they really have not been enamored, they didn't really love the Clintons, they were just afraid of them.
There was a lot of fear.
Uh and as long as the Clintons were doing their dirty tricks against Republicans, well, that was fabulous, and it was fine.
But uh, you know, all these all these endorsements for Obama, all these abandonments of Clinton administration people for Obama.
It's pretty obvious uh that there's no love lost for these two uh in terms of their being the titular heads of the of the Republican Party.
And try this from Spike Lee.
This is from uh from uh New York magazine.
Weighing in on the presidential race, said Spike Lee.
I'm riding my man Obama.
I think he's a visionary.
Actually, Barack told me the first date that he took Michelle to was do the right thing.
I said, Thank God I made it.
Otherwise you'd have taken hurt a soul man.
Well, does this mean, Spike, that you're down in the Clintons?
Spike Lee.
The Clintons, man, they'd lie on a stack of Bibles.
Snippers, that's not misspeaking, that's some pure BS.
I voted for Clinton twice, but that's over with.
These old black politicians, oh Master Clinton was good to us, massa hired a lot of us, massa was good, Charlie Wrangle, David Dinkins.
They have to understand this a new day.
People ain't feeling that stuff.
It's like a tide, and the people who get in the way are just gonna get swept out into the ocean.
Spike Lee speaking on behalf of um Obama there.
Uh so there's there's no love loss for the Clintons, but I'm here to tell you a new prediction.
And I'm gonna put a number to it.
Small number, but it's still, I believe this to be the case.
Twenty percent chance Mrs. Clinton gets the nomination.
And I mentioned this to some friends over the week.
20%.
I think there's a good chance, too, but you think it's that high.
I wouldn't put it that high.
It's a 20%.
Twenty percent chance that Hillary gets a nominate, because Obama can't close this out no matter what he does.
He hasn't been able to close it out.
And the Clintons are the Clintons, and they're making it plain that delegates can vote for whoever they want, and that they're not getting out of this, they're going to a credentials fight at the convention.
I mentioned that uh there was a huge fight at giant cocktail party with Clinton and Obama donors, big bundlers, at the home of Maureen White and Steve Ratner.
Ratner's a finance guy in New York, used to be at Lazard Frere.
He's little Pinch Schultzberger's best friend or one of his best friends.
And um, and I think I think they're Clinton people.
I can't recognize it.
It doesn't matter.
Howard Dean was there to try to quell a riot.
And both sides ended up getting mad at Howard Dean and a lot of people walked out because they said Dean's not showing any leadership here and getting this thing over with.
Uh The Obama people want it ended.
The Clinton people want it to go on, and they tried to come together.
They tried to compromise.
They tried to unify.
And it was a knockdown drag out.
It was a gunfight at the OK Corral on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on Thursday night.
Unity.
This is all such a it's all such a smokescreen.
Unity and all of this rot gut, which takes us back to the drive-by caller we had that couldn't hang on or didn't hang on.
And that is sounds to me rush like you don't want to work with Democrats.
I don't want to work with Democrats unless they change their mind.
If they change their mind and understand that our vision for the country, rooted in our nation's founding, is the best way for the future, fine.
Bring them in.
But I don't want to go have meaningless talks with them where the end result is that I have to give up what I believe in order to say we're working together.
That's been going on for way too long.
I'm making another prediction.
Democrats are going to get a good positive 80% chance that Democrats are going to have 60 seats in the Senate following the November elections.
80% chance.
But folks, even if they don't get 60 seats, there are enough liberal Republicans that if they only get 56, 57 seats, there are enough liberal Republicans to give them 60 votes on any issue in which, or so which means that let's say Senator McCain does win.
Doesn't matter what judges he appoints.
It's not going to matter what he does on tax cuts.
Not in the Senate.
They're going to have 60 votes to be able to defeat any legislative initiative he wants unless it's something they want.
Now in the House, they're going to expand their margins, but they're they're they're they're gonna have uh uh not quite the power in the House uh that they will have in the Senate.
I mean, the Senate's looking really, really bad.
I hate I have to just gotta prepare you for this.
All's not lost, but as we sit here today, the snapshot of the picture is that it looks very, very bad.
If the Democrats get 60 votes, uh 57 seats, or if they get if they get 60 seats, then it really doesn't matter who the president is.
Uh to a certain extent.
Now, this French news agency story from last this is uh Saturday, I guess.
McCain calls for cooperation among Democrats and Republicans.
Did you see this, Snerdley?
By the way, you had your hand up in there a moment ago.
What was the question?
You know, I didn't say they're just I don't think they're just now discovering that the Democrats are just now discovering Clinton.
No, they've known who the Clintons are for a long time.
They've just been afraid of them.
And when the Clintons were doing their dirty tricks against us, it was all fine.
But now the dirty tricks are being turned against the Democrats.
I'm just telling you, go read your average left-wing blog.
Go read your average Kook Fringe left wing blog.
There's sheer hatred for the Clintons out there.
On all over it, other than at Media Matters, which is a Hillary Clinton front group.
Uh Republican White House hopeful John McCain promised on Saturday to cooperate with his Democrat rivals if he's elected president, despite deep divisions between the two parties.
He said, Despite the increasing harshness of our debates and the lack of respect, it often occasions for each side's goodwill.
I still believe that we can and must come together on issues that cannot be addressed without our cooperation.
Now he gave this speech in Prescott, Arizona.
This is that was the last stop on his biographical tour over the past week.
Prescott, Arizona is famous for Goldwaters and New Dolls doing things there in their careers.
He said, Let us argue with each other then.
By all means let us argue.
Our differences are not petty.
They often involve cherished beliefs and represent our best judgment about what's right for our country and humanity.
But let us remember we are not enemies.
Yes, Senator McCain, they are our enemies.
The left is the enemy of freedom and liberty in this country.
And they don't need to be worked with.
They need to be defeated.
It's just that simple.
And along the same lines, the Washington Post, Zachary Goldfarb with the uh with the story.
Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, said Sunday that the leader for the Democrat nomination, Barack Obama, would be, quote, absolutely qualified to be president should the voters elect him.
But he said, I believe that my talent, my background, my experience, which has led to my judgment qualifies me more.
Ladies and gentlemen, under no, is Barack Obama qualified to be president of the United States?
Nor is Hillary Clinton.
Neither of the two Democrats are qualified to be president of the United States.
And I don't care how you want to define qualifications.
In Mrs. Clinton's case, if you want to see well, she is a first lady for eight years.
She's traveled to all the stuff they've tried.
She landed under snipper fire in Bosnia.
Everything she's put her hands on has bombed out royally.
Everything she says she wants to do will destroy the United States economy and grow the and the same thing with Obama.
Obama, I watched his interview with Maria Barcheromo on CNBC, where he's talking about the capital gains tax, and I'm telling you, he doesn't know what it is.
His eyes were glazing over.
And they said she said, but but but but Senator Obama, a hundred million Americans own stocks.
If you raise the capital gains rate, well, whoa, what uh uh not raised on everybody.
Uh we'll we'll only raise it on the wealthy.
Okay, he has no clue.
Neither of these people are qualified.
Now, I know what Senator McCain's trying to do here.
He's trying to run the epitome of an honorable campaign without any partisanship.
Um he's trying to avoid the dirt, and so I understand exactly what he's trying to do.
But folks, I'm gonna tell you if if we don't contrast ourselves with these people on the Democrat side, if we say they're good people and they're qualified and they're f there's no you have to, in a political election, you have to contrast yourself with your opponent.
In most contests, the opponent's the enemy for the time of the contest.
Now when the contest is over, you shake hands, be good sports, move on down the highway.
Uh it appears that that's not going to be the mindset here of the uh of the Republican campaign.
So if Obama's absolutely qualified to be president, then what the hell is their reason to vote against him?
If he's qualified to be president, then what in the why run against him?
If our side's gonna say he's qualified, then how can we criticize him?
We're so screwed.
Welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network.
Ladies and gentlemen, um, Bill Clinton has asked for a brief moment here to address you, uh, the members of the EIB audience.
And no, a special message from President Bill Clinton.
My fellow Americans, lately, much has been made of Hillary and I earning over 100 million dollars since I left office.
Now some have said that it was undeserved, that we didn't work hard to earn it.
You know something?
They're right.
Since President Bush has been in office, the rich have gotten richer with no effort whatsoever.
Hillary and I were also caught up in this vortex of undeserved wealth.
We tried giving it away to several charities, but they were all busy accepting undeserved wealth from others.
So we had to give it to our own charitable foundation.
Please understand.
Hillary and I want this torrent of undeserved wealth to stop.
But we need your help.
Please vote for Hillary in the primary.
And if you're able, send a generous contribution to Hillary Clinton for president.
Thank you.
Special message from former president Bill Clinton addressing the massive wealthy earned for doing nothing since leaving the White House.
You want to hear how liberalism works?
Incrementally, slowly but surely.
This is from the let's see, this is from New Zealand.
New Zealand newspaper website.
A top public health experts calling for a health tax on butter, saying it's pure natural poison.
It's as bad as cigarettes.
New Zealanders eat more butter per head than any other nationality, and Auckland University epidemiologist Professor Rod Jackson says that's why our cholesterol levels are also among the world's highest.
We have a health tax on alcohol and cigarettes.
There should be a health tax on butter.
And that, my friends, is exactly how liberalism works in little steps we tax cigarettes.
So why not?
Tax candy and crackers and popcorn and butter and beef and Doritos and all these things that liberals think is no good for you.
It's the most poisonous commonly consumed food in New Zealand, says this researcher.
Butter.
It's about the purest form of saturated fat you can eat.
It has no protein, no calcium.
Butter has had all of the good things taken out and just left the poison.
Uh this is who they are.
It's a poison.
It is a po you know, the only milk from the cow is uh is older than butter in terms of the whole cow process.
So I guess milk's bad too.
Which they've which they've tried to say it is.
Anyway, to the phones.
People have been uh patiently waiting.
This is Henry in Youngstown, Ohio.
Hello, sir.
Hey, Rush.
Yes, sir.
Uh I was listening to you talk earlier about your saying how the fact that Americans that all got in 50% got iPods in the last five years.
Four years.
And you sort of said that meant the country were better off and wealthier.
And the only point I had to make was that if the iPods are made in China, and then we borrow the money from the Chinese to buy the iPods, it means that the Chinese are wealthier, not us, we're just in debt.
Uh is that how you figure it?
We're borrowing the money from the Chinese, the American consumer is to buy iPods which are made in China, so it's actually the Chinese whose wealth is growing and not ours.
Yeah, especially when you have a massive free deficit like we have, that's bad.
When we're borrowing millions, if not millions from foreigners, that's bad.
And that's just keeping this economy going.
It's borrow money.
We're in debt up to our wazoo.
Well, you know, the trade deficit is a separate argument from the point that I was trying to make in terms of American prosperity.
American the the the prosperity of the American people.
Now, if you want to talk about the Chinese buying up tea bills and propping up the U.S. government uh that's I'm not gonna argue with you about that, but I'm also not gonna agree that it's a necessarily a bad thing.
The genie's out of the bottle here on protectionism.
We're not gonna go back to it.
It's not possible.
Uh in fact, I I I would venture to say that it is the the fact that the world economy is now linked to us that uh is will limit any downturn that we have.
The rest of the world cannot tolerate it, cannot survive if we go down.
They're not gonna let it happen.
There will not be an economic war for China on this kind of stuff.
There's too much there's too much linkage now.
But just in terms, in terms, Henry, of the prosperity of the American people via their hard work, the amount of money and wealth the average American family has as opposed to a hundred years ago.
There's no comparison.
And I just was using the the statistics of how long new technologies take to reach half the American homes, regardless where they're made.
It doesn't anything to do with where they're made.
Uh to illustrate here the um the point.
Now I know a lot of people uh in in you know northeastern and upper midwestern states are suffering from uh uh an exact like look, Michigan.
I mean, Michigan's a single state recession, uh, and it has been uh for a while, and there are pockets of Ohio that are in just as bad a shape.
Uh the average income per capita income is lower than the national average.
Uh but I'm gonna tell you that this this is this is due to the fact that those people have been voting for Democrats, and you've got you've got Michelle Obama going into, I think it was Zanesville and telling people don't go into corporate America, don't go into corporate law, don't try to be a hedge funder, stay away from it.
Don't earn a lot of money.
Stay in these businesses that serve other people.
Do not become a member of the middle class, avoid middle classness.
Right out of the same mouth as the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
So the Democrats, dirty little secret is, Henry, the Democrats love uh as many people as possible not becoming prosperous, because that means they will need the government to get by.
Back in a second.
Hey, folks.
Do you know that now gravel can cause cancer?
From Kildeer, North Dakota, the sound of children playing baseball has been silenced at one ball field in the western Dakota city of Kildeer, officials fear the ground itself is simply too unsafe.
The ballpark, one of two in town, about 700 people live in the town, is covered with crushed gravel containing a mineral found in the chalky white rock mined from the nearby Kill Deer Mountains.
The rock, used for decades on everything from gravel roads to flower beds, contains fibers that can collect in the lungs of people who breathe it, health officials say.
Steve Way, Federal Environmental Protection Agency coordinator, said studies have shown that this mineral, uh irionite, causes cancer in lab rats, though the mineral is not regulated by his agency.
Gravel.
I don't know who's snorting the gravel.
Who's getting down there and breathing it?
I don't know who's doing this.
Uh state representative Shirley Meyer told federal and state officials at a meeting that Dunn County now will have to look outside its borders for gravel.
It seems to me like you're making a mountain out of a molehill with what little data you have, she told the EPA.
The taxpayers in this county are having a tough time trying to swallow this.
I'm eighty years old, it hasn't killed me yet, said Milton Johnson, who ranches in the Kildeer Mountains.
They can test my lungs if they want.
I've been breathing it all my life.
Gary Jepson, another rancher in the area, called the worries over arionite, one of those sky is falling kind of deal.
Just remember saccharine.
Just remember saccharine.
It also caused cancer in lab rats.
You know what kind?
Bladder cancer.
They injected these poor rats with a lifetime equivalent in one dose of the amount of sacchar found in an average diet soda.
And he said, look at that cancer kit, and they banned it for what you had to go, you had to go sneaking in from Canada.
And of course, now saccharine is legal, even though there are better substitutes for it.
Western North Dakota could have hundreds of miles of roads paved with gravel containing arionite, paving them with asphalt would be too costly.
They want to pay over all the roads now.
Liberalism, big government nannies all over this country, ladies and gentlemen.
And this is how they work it.
They tell you that you are going to die.
And in order to see to it that you don't die and don't get sick, we have to spend X numbers of billions to either rebuild these ballparks or these highways or cancel events at the ballparks because of the children, and so forth.
Now, what does this do?
Drip, drip, drip, drab, drab drab.
It convinces way too many Americans that government is their sole protector.
It is out for their best interests, and that government will protect them.
The government will keep them safe.
Government will make sure they don't get sick.
And ditto for their children.
A lot of people.
This causes what?
Causes people to abrogate responsibility.
Turn it over to the nanny state.
It's hideous.
Just this is why you don't compromise with these people.
This is why you don't walk across the out try to get along with them unless you can convince them that they're stupid.
And that this is nannyism and it has no place, and it's it's a bunch of people, bureaucracies with way too much time on their hands.
Sort of like, you know, politely slapping somebody in the face.
Will you get some sense about you?
Can we just talk common sense here instead of bureaucratese and liberalism all over the place?
Here's uh here's Lynn in Olima, Ohio.
You're next on the EIB network.
Hello.
Yeah.
Hello, Rush.
Uh fine.
How are you?
Fine.
Um I'm just wondering like what plant you live on, because I'm living down here on a planet Earth, and since uh present republic Republican president has been in office, I watched this country unravel.
Like I've done it.
It's done just the opposite, Lynn.
No, and I hate to break it to you, but it's done just the opposite.
Economic growth, the Dow Jones industrial average, productivity wages have all skyrocketed since the Bush tax cuts.
When it was really bad was in Jimmy Carter was president.
No.
Yes, Lynn, you sorry.
No, no, I'm sorry.
We keep losing jobs.
No countries are closing.
No, no, no.
Well, recently, since the Democrats took over Congress, the stock markets plummeted.
No.
And we have started losing jobs.
No, no, we've been with as soon as uh he came in office, it started going downhill like a train.
Getting ready to derail.
I that's what I said.
I'm living here.
I don't know where you're living, but Lynn I want I know this is going to be pointless, but I love trying to just stick with me, folks, on this.
I I love trying these things.
Remember there's a whole lot of Lins out there listening.
I might not get through to her, but I might get through to some of the other Lynn, listen to me on this.
Look at me, okay.
You want are you interested in truth or do you want me to confirm your feelings?
Because you know, I could I could do it, I could do a Bill Clinton.
Like oh, Lynn, you know, uh feeling.
No, I know they were, Lynn.
And George Bush had come in here and he he killed 4,000 Americans in a pointless and unjust war, and he's just destroyed all the working jobs and so forth.
It's I feel for you bad.
I feel for you.
I really I wish there was something I could do, but I'm not in power, right?
You gotta vote for Hillary.
Now I could do that.
And see how much better now wait a minute.
See how much better you feel if I do that.
But that's not truth.
You want the truth.
Sure.
I'm sure I want the truth.
Uh well, you know, sometimes the truth some people don't like that they're afraid of it because it shocked their worldview.
No.
The country's not gone downhill since two thousand one when Bush was inaugurated.
He inherited a mild recession from the Clinton Yeah.
See?
There was already a mild recession uh when Bush took office, and then nine-eleven hit.
That had further economic distress.
Yeah, the recovery.
Now, Lynn.
Well, you did.
If a Democrat was in office, the country wouldn't have ended up like this.
That I know.
Lynn, if is for children.
We can't go back and rewrite history, and we can't say, gee, if Al Gordon won, we wouldn't be in this situation.
I could play that game to you.
If I if if if uh if a Democrat had been in the white house, we'd have had two or three more terrorist attacks in this country.
I don't believe that.
Well, that's an if too.
Well, I I'm just doing what you're doing.
You're telling me that if a Democrat had won, we wouldn't have this.
We don't have an economic pro we have not had the country fall apart since 2006.
Oh, it is.
I can't believe you can't say that.
I mean, people have lost their jobs, they're losing their houses.
Factories are closing down.
You know something, Lynn?
Up until up until last month, employment in this country was bigger and more people had productive jobs than ever before in the history of this country, up until last month.
The people who are being foreclosed on are people who should never have been lent money in the first place because they were not qualified.
But Democrats, not wanting to deny them the American dream, gave them uh required the lending industry to give them predatory or give them what they're called predatory loans.
I don't can you tell me what a predatory loan is, by the way.
Do you know what it is?
Well, no, but I'm not gonna argue with that.
That may be Why not?
No, I'm just not gonna argue with that, but I'm just telling you, I know what's going on.
I know that the j the factories are closing and people have lost their jobs.
That's why they're losing their houses.
Uh since they have a job.
Now now you're partially right.
Since the Democrats have have assumed control of Congress, we have lost the manufacturing jobs.
But you can't can't uh blame the Democrats.
I most certainly can.
I most certainly they're blocking free trade legislation.
They are they are doing everything they can to dispirit the the um the attitude of the American people.
The reason you think what you think is not just because your life experiences, because the party you vote for is telling you this country's in bad shape, and you want it to be in bad shape.
Oh no, I'm listening to the news.
Well, okay, the Democrats run the news and the liberal media.
You're listening to news that you're being would you do me a favor?
Yeah, sure.
Make me promise.
Just to try it.
Try turning off the news just for a week.
Seriously, Lynn, I want you to do this and see if your mood uh improves.
Don't watch all this negative uh hype and propaganda that isn't true.
People are not losing their jobs left and right.
We do have economic problems.
The gas price is high, food prices are high.
I'm not denying that there's economic challenges.
We're the United States of America.
We come out of these things each and every time they happen.
But we can only come out of them if the American people, people like you, understand that it's people like you who make the country work.
It's not me, it's not your local politicians, not your state politicians, not the federal government, you, your friends, you make the country work.
Getting up every day going to work, trying to improve your economic circumstance, engaging in commerce, you make the country work.
And if your party of the news come along and dispirit you, depress you, and make you think there's no point in working hard because the country's going to hell in a handbasket because George Bush is an idiot, then you are going to be letting the country down by not doing your part.
Country needs people like you to get active and busy and stop and and and react, okay.
What can we do about it?
Go out and engage in it.
Be more productive, work harder.
Instead of sitting around and whining and moaning about George Bush or any other politician and wishing that a Democrat were in office, because you can't do anything about that till November.
Right.
Then if if people like you, uh uh who make the country work, would simply turn off the news, don't let your mood be affected by what you think is happening to other people because you're being lied to about that.
We not we wouldn't be in the economic circumstances that we're in.
You have more power to alter your life and the life of lives of your family than you know.
But if people come around and tell you it'll be pointless, because George Bush is an idiot, or because we're losing jobs, manufacturing all this sort of stuff, you're gonna say, okay, what's the point?
And you're gonna sit around and wait for a new president to fix this?
Right.
People sit well, you shouldn't because the president doesn't fix anything.
People do.
The president doesn't make the country work, the American people do.
What presidents can do is make it harder or easier for people to make the country work.
Okay.
The president can't do it.
The president can raise your taxes, make it harder for you to succeed.
He can cut your taxes and get rid of regulation, make it easier for you to succeed.
But he can't rejuvenate and revive an economy.
If he could, there would have never been any recessions.
FDR would have gotten us out of the depression with a snap of his fingers.
Took twelve years.
No president has that kind of power.
No political party does either.
The American people make the country work.
Join us, Lynn.
Back in just a second, folks.
Stay with us.
That last caller, Lynn from Ohio.
Bless her heart is exactly what happens to people with years and years of exposure to liberalism.
She's depressed.
She believes government holds all of her answers.
But most importantly, she's lost her free will as a person.
She doesn't think she has any control over her life, her economic circumstances.
She has bought fully into the notion that what government does determines her happiness.
Or her misery.
And she's bought the notion that when Republicans run the government, she's miserable.
When Democrats run the country, she's probably just as miserable but doesn't think so because Democrats are in office.
It really is tragic.
This what liberalism does to people, it really just destroys their free will, destroys their concept of self.
Destroys the concept of their own ability to be better than they think they are.
Makes them sit around and wait.
It really does this is one of the most infuriating things about liberalism to me.
And I s I swear, folks, there's nothing about that that I want to compromise with.
It's just hideous.
What liberalism does to its own supporters, to its own advocates, is just a plain old American tragedy.
Let me give you another example.
This is an editorial today, or from yesterday, in the Washington Post.
Sorry, not an editorial, it's an op-ed.
And it's by Andrew Colson, who is the director of the Cato Institute Center for Educational Freedom, the Cato Institute's a liberal think tank.
Listen to this.
We're often told that public schools are underfunded.
In the District of Columbia, the spending figure cited most commonly is $8,322 per child.
But in truth, total spending in the District of Columbia is $25,000 per child, on par with tuition at Sidwell Friends, the private school Chelsea Clinton attended in the 1990s.
What accounts for the nearly threefold difference in these numbers?
Well, the commonly cited figure counts only part of the local operating budget.
To calculate total spending, we have to add up all sources of funding for education from kindergarten through the 12th grade, excluding spending on charter schools and higher education.
So for the current scrual year, the local operating budget in the district is $831 million, including relevant expenses such as the teacher retirement fund.
The capital budget is $218 million.
The district receives about $85.5 million in federal funding.
And the D.C. Council contributes an extra $81 million.
If you divide all of that by the $49,422 students enrolled for the 2007-2008 year, you end up with about $24,600 per student in the District of Columbia public schools.
For comparison, total pupil spending in D.C. area private schools among the most upscale in the nation averages about $10,000 less, or $14,000 per student.
For most private schools, the difference is even greater.
And then Mr. Colson goes on with further detail.
$25,000 per year to publicly educate children in the district, and they aren't being educated.
Yeah, it's a libertarian think tank.
But uh this is just not surprising to any of us.
The figure in New Jersey is close to this.
The figure in New York is close to this.
And we just heard from um whose group was it Colin Powell's group about all the dropouts that are taking place.
This is pure liberalism, folks.
100% pure liberalism destroying these institutions, and then all the while clamoring for more money, saying that we're not spending enough on education.
Private schools spending much less per costing much less per person, do a far better job of education.
Why do you think so many parents want their kids to go into private schools?
But these school, now the DC school district is exactly the kind of school district that Colin Powell was talking about, inner city school district, all of these dropout problems, all these problems of people not learning anything.
He called it a catastrophe.
It's not a catastrophe.
It is an abject, utter total failure.
And it's recognized as such by a whole lot of people who just don't have the guts to point the finger at the right place when finding the source of the problem.
There's not a blame game here.
There's no blame.
There is actual fact to demonstrate that liberals and unions running the public schools have not as their objective educating kids, but rather protecting union jobs and other uh jobs in administration and so forth.
And some people even think that there might be an advantage to undereducating kids.
It destroys their will early in life.
Gets them voting Democrat and makes them unable to understand classic arguments that might change their minds someday.
Okay, we've still got less.
I I've what we've played one audio soundbite.
Two audio soundbites today.
We got a lot of good ones.
We're gonna have to go like a bat out of hell in the next hour, folks.
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