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April 11, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:19
April 11, 2008, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
All right, a guy and a friend are playing golf.
This is Masters Week, after all.
A man and a friend are playing golf one day.
One of the guys is about to chip onto the green when he sees a long funeral procession on the road next to the golf course.
He stops in mid-swing, takes off his cap, closes his eyes, bows down in prayer.
His friend says, wow, that's the most thoughtful and touching thing I've ever seen.
You are truly a kind man.
The man pauses and then replies, yeah, well, we were married for 35 years.
I thought that might, you know, get you going with a golf joke there.
Hi, everybody.
Good Friday.
I am Jason Lewis in here in the Northern Command, snowbound in this global warming day.
I got a message for Al Gore today.
Shovel my driveway.
I'm going to get to that a little later as the global warming evidence continues to diminish along with any springtime temperatures here in the Northwoods.
It is great to be behind the Golden EIB Mike.
Once again, greetings, conversationalists, across the fruited plain.
I have talent on loan from Rush on this open line Friday.
And that's right.
It is an open line Friday as always right here on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
That means it's your turn, your turn to parry with the rank amateur hosting subbing for Rush today.
That would be me, Jason Lewis, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
What did I tell you for all you folks stranded there, for all you folks stranded in the airports yesterday?
What did I say?
I said we were talking about the regulatory state and how that's really a tax and how the FAA, Fine Southwest, forced America to ditch these MD-80s when there was not a safety of flight issue.
Remember that?
Now, some people, I'm certain, rolled their eyes and said, are you kidding me?
Flying the unfriendly skies?
And I said the market has a wonderful mechanism of regulating behavior.
You know, this is one of the reasons we don't need so much government regulation.
There are two aspects that already regulate behavior in a free society and a free market.
One, obviously, business.
It's not good if you're serving food that kills people.
You don't tend to stay in business that way.
And it's also not good if a plane goes down for an airline.
They really don't make a lot of money off that, not to mention the lawsuits.
So the market has a tendency to regulate and correct any excesses.
And there's also the insurance industry.
The insurance industry is a wonderful regulator of behavior, much more effective than government.
Remember the SNL crisis?
We were told if the government insured all those deposits for those SNL kingpins in the late 80s and early 90s, that the government regulators, well, the government, the taxpayer was issuing the insurance to cover those deposits.
Don't worry, folks, there won't be a bailout.
The government regulators will make certain they have the capital requirements at the savings and loan.
Well, a few politicians intervened, and all of a sudden you had all these bad loans, and we were on the hook bailing out the savings and loan, which is one of the reasons federal deposit insurance is a questionable endeavor, at least at big figures or big numbers.
Anyway, the point here is the FAA is not making your flight any safer at this juncture.
All they are doing is inconveniencing thousands of passengers today and costing the airlines when they don't need it tens of millions of dollars.
Washington Post today.
Inspectors found slack wires, clamps in the wrong position, insulation that was too thick, and ties spread too far apart, the airline said.
The FAA then denied Americans' request to space out inspections and repairs over several days while continuing to operate the fleet.
Airline industry representatives have expressed surprise at the FAA's stance towards American.
In the past, they said the agency would likely have allowed the carrier to make the fixes over a period of days or weeks.
They noted the 2006 directive on the MD-80 wiring gave the airlines 18 months to comply.
That means the regulators, while concerned about the wiring, didn't believe it was a pressing safety matter.
You know, when you sit in Russia's chair long enough, it rubs off.
It's great to be right.
And I'm telling you, this is what happens when Democrats like Representative James Oberstar are running the Transportation Committee.
This is what happens when Charles Schumer is pressuring the FAA to micromanage and cause inconvenience for you and tens of millions of dollars to airlines that can't afford it with the rising cost of fuel and when the Justice Department keeps nixing mergers.
You know, there are a lot of problems with the airline industry, as you know.
But fundamentally, the success of deregulation, about the only good thing Alfred Kahn and Jimmy Carter did, has overwhelmed the airline industry.
Taking an airplane today is a little bit like taking the Greyhound 30 years ago.
It's so cheap, everybody can do it.
And safety, safety has never, ever been better.
I mean, you take a look, you take a look at the number of accidents.
I don't know.
I can't remember of a maintenance-related commercial plane crash in the United States where you actually pinpointed the crash because, oh, somebody screwed up.
Now, I'm sure there's one or two, but not very many.
And the per miles traveled per 1,000 passenger safety record never been better.
So why is the FAA micromanaging?
Because the Democrats in Congress are now pressuring.
They love regulation.
They don't believe in the insurance market's ability to regulate.
You know, if you're insuring the airlines, you don't think as an insurance agent or insurance shareholder, you're going to go to that airline and make certain they're safe?
Of course you will.
And that's the bottom line.
That's the profit motive.
That's going to have a much greater interest in really getting to the bottom of this, if there is any real problem, than a government bureaucrat who doesn't live or die no matter what happens.
And the same, of course, with the airlines.
The airlines do not want unsafe flights for obvious reasons.
And yet, Democrats have to pretend there's a, oh, there's a crisis here.
We need government intervention because without government intervention, they would not have a job.
They wouldn't know what to do.
What's next?
We're going to tell people they have to buy fluorescent light bulbs that cost $4 a bulb instead of an incandescent that costs 50 cents?
Well, actually, that is next.
As you know, and everybody's been talking about this, in the 2007 horribly misguided energy legislation, we are now, in the name of global warming, my friends, the greatest threat to freedom.
Last time I was filling in for Rush, a month ago or so, I said it is true there are a number of ways our freedom can be taken away by terrorists whom we are now engaged in.
By the way, we've got some good news on the Maliki government there in Iraq getting tough on the Shias a little later.
But that's one way.
Obviously, we found that out with 9-11.
We can have an invading army take away our liberty.
But here's what everybody seems to have lost.
Over the course of history, the people least friendly to the cause of freedom have been governments or people in government.
Government can take away your liberty.
Government can screw up your flight plan.
Government can sink a business.
And government, in the name of global warming, will cost the average family, will cost the average family $10,000 a year more than they otherwise would have to pay.
You know, there's a new study out, a new study out by Art Laffer, the famous supply-side economist.
And he said, if the Kyoto Accord or the Lieberman-Warner bill, basically a lot of what McCain is talking about, goes through, the average household will end up paying more than $10,800 in extra costs.
Light bulbs, higher electricity bills, more for gasoline, more for alternative energy sources like the biofuel mess we talked about yesterday.
You know, with corn at $6 a bushel, how does anybody think ethanol is going to be a cheaper fuel?
For heaven's sakes, if you didn't have the 51 cent tariff or 54 cent tariff and the 51 cent subsidy and the hundreds of millions of dollars in state subsidies going to ethanol plants, you wouldn't be able to buy a gallon of ethanol for under five bucks.
A gallon of ethanol, by the way, that gives off about the same amount of energy that it takes to make it.
That's not a bargain.
This global warming thing, you know, we're sitting here in the Northwoods at the Northern Command here at the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, and we are faced with a foot of snow from the Dakotas to Minnesota to Wisconsin to the UP.
It's April 11th.
The 2007, 2008 winter was one of the coldest we have had in years and years and years.
The World Meteorological Society now admits the temperatures have plateaued since 1998.
And 1998 was not the most warm year, the warmest year.
It was in the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s, 1934, and NASA had to admit that a few weeks back with egg on their face.
Never has so much hand-wringing gone into so little, so little of a crisis.
But I will tell you, you know as well as I do.
This whole global warming fiction.
And I don't think, I'm not suggesting to you the temperatures haven't gone up.
I'm suggesting to you that temperatures always go up or always go down.
There is not a constant world temperature.
I am suggesting to you that the global warming models do not comport with observation.
You take a look at the models and you retroactively apply them, the temperatures are way off the scale of what the models would have predicted.
You've got this difference between observation, satellites, and what the models tell us.
And because the way they engineer these models, specifically NASA and other people, for a political agenda, the way they engineer them is they say every result of warming, of slight warming, will expound or exponentially grow into great warming.
If you have more cloud cover, that will actually add to warmth, when in fact the negative feedback of cloud cover will probably reduce warmth.
But they don't put that in the models, you see.
And so what global warming has become is simply the question for the answer liberals have had for 50, 60 years.
These are not, it is not a coincidence, friends, that every single answer to global warming was being pushed by the Democrat left long before global warming.
Increase in taxes, increase in gas taxes, going after the oil companies, renewables, solar panels.
It's like a bunch of hippies from Southern California.
And by the way, L.A. is about to enact a global climate tax on their gasoline.
What, nine cents a gallon out there in the LA basin, L.A. County?
Nice going.
It just keeps going on and on.
And now it's gotten to be such a threat to freedom that I'm not making this up.
You know it and I know it.
They're telling us that we can't buy cheap, effective incandescent light bulbs.
The 2007 energy bill says by, I believe, 2012 that they're going to ban the incandescent bulb.
Representative Michelle Bachman of Minnesota has now, in response, introduced, and this is a sad commentary on America when we got to go down this road, she has introduced the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act to undo that piece in the energy legislation.
Oh, did I tell you?
Those fluorescent bulbs have mercury in them, and you have to have a hazmet team enter your home if they dare break.
I'm only exaggerating slightly for effect.
Here are these environmentalists.
Oh, we can't have mercury in the fish, but now they demand that we import mercury into our homes and pay extra for it.
This is global warming insanity.
1-800-282-2882.
It's an open line Friday on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Jason Lewis, back with your calls when we return.
It is true, driving is still much more dangerous than taking a commercial airliner, and yet that's not stopping James Oberstar and Charles Schumer and everybody in the Democrat Congress from getting all over the FAA and driving them into micromanagement.
Wouldn't it have been better to fix these little problems, not flight safety issues, over time instead of having you listening to the Rush Limbaugh program stranded at the airport?
Welcome back.
I am Jason Lewis.
And there's some stats on this.
I don't have to, you know, I don't have to tell most of you.
You know it intuitively.
But the fact of the matter is fatal accidents on airplanes are rare events.
I think what, a 1 100th of 1% or something like that.
No, 1 100th accidents per 100,000 flight hours.
So it just, it's the number of accidents in all segments of civil aviation in 2006 were less than 2005.
We've got the lowest number of accidents and fatalities in 40 years.
And by their own admission, the FAA said, well, inferred anyway, well, a couple of years ago, we probably would have done, let them, let them handle this problem over time because it wasn't a flight safety issue.
But now, Charles Schumer and James Oberstar, the Transportation Committee political potentate, are out there, you know, getting headlines, trying to scare the public.
Democrats love to scare the public, big, bad business, and all of that.
Meanwhile, they're importing mercury into your homes with this ridiculous.
You know, I am so desperate to have a symbolic victory against the global warming fascism out there.
And make no mistake, this is fascism.
When they mandate you use a more expensive fuel, biofuels, when they mandate that utilities and taxpayers reimburse utilities, but we still have to pay for it, use solar, inefficient, use wind power.
Wind power is one of the most inefficient fuels out there.
And I'll tell you why.
The amount of land you've got to put up for these wind turbine farms dwarfs anything of a traditional utility power generating system.
And then you've got extra transmission lines you've got to build.
Oh, yeah, and the wind doesn't blow all the time.
There simply is no dispute that these alternative modes of energy cost more.
And we mandate them.
We mandate biofuels.
We mandate your electricity bill going up.
A local energy executive up here in the Northwoods just said it.
Look, your energy bill, the cost of heating and cooling your home, the cost of electricity consumption, and we use much more of it now with all of these computers we have and the video games.
It's going to go up $2,300 a year.
Gasoline's gone up because of these mandates, boutique fuel mandates.
Your utility bill is going to go up.
And so by any, and now, the cost to buy a light bulb is going to go up.
Can you say we live in a free country when we allow the federal government through federal legislation to tell you what kind of a light bulb to put in your home?
This is the tip of the global warming iceberg.
Pardon the pun.
And I don't know how the American people can be so obtuse about this when it comes to not being able to see this for what it is.
This is the avenue to socialism.
This is the avenue to more government.
Why it's an international crisis.
We must have an international enforcement mechanism, i.e. the UN, the IPCC.
We've got to control it.
It's a crisis.
We've got to manufacture this crisis so we can do what we've always wanted to do as big government nanny state liberals.
Control every, if you let a government control your energy use, you let a government control you, period.
And there is no energy crisis except the one the government has created.
In fact, the U.S. Geological Survey today called the 4.3 billion barrels of oil recently discovered, I believe it was just a couple of days ago.
I know some guys that have been working on this, but the confirmation just came in a couple of days ago in the Bakken Shake formation in North Dakota and Montana and parts of Canada.
We now have in North Dakota, Montana, parts of Canada, 4.3 billion barrels of oil newly discovered.
25,000 square miles in that area.
Two-thirds of the acreage is in western North Dakota.
U.S. Geological Survey, largest continuous oil accumulation it has ever assessed.
How much you want to bet?
The environmentalists will oppose drilling there.
That's called a manufactured energy crisis.
That is called denying Americans the resources of their own nation in the name of compact fluorescent light bulbs, which, as I understand, you can't turn them on and off quickly.
That'd be good for if a burglar comes in.
They do not perform as well as the proponents suggest.
They don't last as long as the proponents suggest.
And they're filled with mercury.
And, you know, a lot of the proponents of this, oh, it's just a tad, just a little bit of mercury.
What's the problem?
But they go apoplectic if they find a trace in a fish someplace.
This is the insanity of this.
And I'm just telling you, this is the clear and present danger domestically facing the freedom that we have grown to enjoy in environmentalism.
And the GOP embraces this nonsense at its own peril.
To the phones we go.
1-800-282-2882.
Let's start with Chicago and Mark.
Welcome to the Russia Limbaugh program with me, Jason Lewis.
Hi.
Hi.
Thank you for taking my call.
Sure.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there recently an incident with Southwest Airlines that they found some safety issues.
They were flying aircraft that had real safety problems.
They fined Southwest.
What was it?
They fined them $10 million.
Was it $10 million recently?
Yeah, $10.
Last month, the FAA fined Southwest $10 million for flying planes that missed inspections.
But I am not familiar with the pressing safety issue on that one.
So you don't think it shows that there's a need for regulation?
Well, I don't know.
So if you were, let's say, stockholder of Southwest or American, think it would be a good idea if one of your planes went down for your share price?
But you see that there.
No, no, no.
Try answering the question.
Would it be?
I'm not a concern.
Of course.
But you'd be concerned for your own interest, wouldn't you?
I mean, for your own money.
If you're insuring the airline industry as an insurance company, and you could pay out hundreds of millions, maybe billions with lawsuits, do you think you'd have an interest in making certain the plane is up to snuff?
But it was the FAA which discovered this, not the insurance companies.
Maybe that's the point, though, Mark.
Perhaps the airlines and the insurance industry, the markets, realized, okay, let's fix this.
Let's get it up to technical compliance with government regulations, but it is not a pressing safety concern.
That's the difference between government and the markets.
Talent on loan from Rush, at least for today, the big guy will be back on Monday.
In the meantime, check out RushLimbaugh.com.
Well, I like that bumper.
A little beetle bumper action here on this Open Line Friday.
1-800-282-2882.
I am Jason Lewis from the Northern Command, shoveling.
Somebody get Al Gore up here quick.
You know, I will say this, and this is what I was getting to with this Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act.
We need a symbolic victory to fight back against the global warming jihad.
And that's what it is, a jihad to take away your freedom.
That's all this is.
The environmentalists are not a friend to freedom.
They're not a friend to capitalism.
They are a radical group, quite frankly, most of whom are socialist-leaning, who don't mind world government, who think the earth has rights.
The earth doesn't have rights.
We have rights.
That's why we want to treat the earth nicely so we can live here and enjoy it.
But the earth doesn't have rights, as Jock Casteau once suggested.
But that's what these people believe.
Now, don't get me wrong.
I believe in Earth first.
Earth first.
We can mine and log the other planets later.
But we have the Earth for us to exploit.
It is for our benefit.
And yet, we're being told what light bulbs to use.
And I think we need a symbolic victory and a symbolic victory and an important one for poor people.
I mean, if you've got to fit your home with $3 or $3.50 light bulbs, you know, that might help Phillips.
It might help GE, the global warming company, whose earnings were down yesterday.
Talk about poetic justice.
Might help those guys.
They're pushing this nonsense.
But it doesn't help the poor family go out and buy a 50-cent incandescent bulb.
No, in the name of Al Gore, an Earth in the Balance, you've got to spend four times that much.
Oh, and by the way, there's a little mercury in there.
And you call your local pollution control agency.
You call your local 9-11 emergency outfit.
And you ask them, what do I do if a light bulb with mercury breaks in my house?
Stand back six feet, cut out the carpet, throw it away.
You cannot throw it in the garbage.
You damn near have to bring out the hazmat team.
And this is the stuff they are mandated in the 2007 energy legislation, a bipartisan piece of, well, I can't really say that on Friday or any day on the radio.
So if we could all get behind the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act, author Representative Michelle Bachman of Minnesota, and we could rescind that just as a statement that says, whoa, here.
This is insanity.
It is not cost-efficient.
It is not, you don't have any extra utility here.
These bulbs don't work as well as incandescents in some functions.
Some people say there's irradiation problems, but I haven't confirmed that.
Some people with sensitive skin have problems with fluorescent bulbs.
They got mercury in them.
But the point here is: if you want to buy a fluorescent bulb, have at it.
I don't care.
They're on the market.
What on earth is government doing telling me I don't have a choice?
That's the point, obviously.
And that's why in modern-day environmentalism is fundamentally, irrefutably anti-freedom.
Kenneth, in Lexington, New England, or excuse me, Lexington, Nebraska, you're next up on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Yes.
Are you there?
Yes, sir.
Go ahead.
Yes.
Thanks for taking my call.
The questions that you're raising on the ethanols, I wanted to ask some questions.
A man says I have to only give answers.
If I haul in a semi-load of corn, basically there's a semi-load of corn comes back out of that ethanol plant.
All that corn goes to livestock feed because unless you dry it or something, now they're figuring out they can put it in a silo and wet pack it.
But it has to go back through the livestock.
Why are livestock farmers revolting?
Why are livestock farmers revolting against the ethanol program then?
I don't know.
I do.
Maybe it's because they're paying the price, and they aren't getting anything more for their meat.
That's right.
The price of corn has been driven so high that livestock farming is now in jeopardy.
They're still killing 1,000 head a day.
And it's costing them much, much more.
Pardon?
And it's costing them much, much more.
Have you been to the grocery store lately and seen the price of meat?
Have you seen the price of eggs?
Have you seen the price of every commodity, derivative of corn?
Whoa, whoa, that's the question I wanted to ask.
I could buy pork roast this week at the grocery store for 88 cents a pound.
I had to buy two in a bag, but that's okay.
I know how to put it in my freezer.
Are you suggesting to the listeners something along the lines of, are you going to believe me or your own eyes?
There is no debate here, my friend, on the price.
Let me finish, sir.
There is no debate here on food inflation.
Everybody agrees the price of food, milk, eggs, meat, is skyrocketing right now.
And we can debate the causes.
I happen to think part of it is due to diverting corn to inefficient fuel when it's very, very efficient food.
I happen to believe that the subsidies are encouraging that.
And most economists happen to believe that as well, even the New York Times these days.
So I think you're in a minority looking out for your own self-interest.
If you take a look, even if you believe that ethanol is a good idea, then fine, do it.
You don't need the subsidies.
Leave the ethanol out.
Well, that's what's driving the price of corn.
Okay, it is.
If you go to the grocery store and buy a box of post toasties, corn flakes from the post company, there is less than a dime of corn in that box.
Why are you rationalizing this?
We have debate.
The results.
I'm going to explain to you it is not the price of corn that's driving yourself.
Okay, so what you're.
All right, let me get this straight.
You're suggesting we can divert 100 million tons of grain and transform that into fuel without any dislocation in the marketplace or the price for corn.
Where does all of that corn have to go?
When it leaves the ethanol plant, it has to go right back into the market.
How much energy does it take?
How much energy, including fossil fuels, water, the heated water, does it take to make a gallon of ethanol?
I don't know.
You're changing the question, though.
What I'm trying to get at here, you're trying to say corn is not driving this.
I disagree at $6 a bushel.
I think corn is driving a whole lot these days.
And also, it's driving up the price of soybeans and wheat, as that acreage is not available for those commodities because of the subsidies for corn.
But that's not the point.
The point is, even if we disagree on the cause, there is no reason that the taxpayer should be subsidizing over time billions of dollars for a particular program.
If it is a program worth its salt, it will come to market on its own.
Do you agree with that?
Yeah.
That's right.
We said that.
Okay, so look, I got to go.
I can't get bogged down with one call.
I'm just telling you, I'm just telling you, we can disagree on this, but maybe we can find common ground that we ought to reduce these subsidies as of now.
And if somebody can bring an alternative fuel, including ethanol, to market without getting a check from the government, but paying taxes like the oil companies do, then if they put the oil companies out of business, I'll be cheerleading.
But we should not be dislocating and distorting the marketplace with billions of dollars in subsidies, and I'm talking including agricultural subsidies to grow these crops over time that it disadvantages one fuel over another in the name of a fictitious crisis.
That's what I'm talking about.
David in Royal Oak, Michigan, you're next on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Welcome to the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Hi, Jason.
How are you doing today?
I'm doing well, sir.
How are you?
Oh, I'm doing pretty good.
See, I had a thought scenario.
You go to the grocery store, you're in the cranberry juice aisle, you drop one of them, and it's clean up an aisle nine.
Okay.
Well, aisle nine at the local hardware carries fluorescent bulbs.
Yes, sir.
And what happens if you drop one?
You break it, step on it, run, roll the cart over it or something like that.
Right.
The SWAT team comes in along with Hazmet.
Yeah.
But isn't that a liability problem to mom and pop hardwares, to the big box people?
And can these people even afford to carry them on the insurance that's going to be involved in?
Well, they will.
Yeah, they can afford to carry them because the margin, let's say you're operating on a 25% gross margin.
The bulb cost, whatever your cost is, you mark it up a third and that gives you a 25%.
Let's say the cost of an item is 75 cents.
You sell it for a dollar.
In the business world, in the wholesale world, that's called a gross margin of 25 cents or 25%.
Well, 25% of a $4 bulb is a lot larger than 25% of a 50-cent bulb.
Exactly.
So in this particular case, some business interests are, once again, allied with government and against the consumer.
So they may rationalize some of the concerns you have by saying, well, we're going to make more money on this.
Sure.
But you bring up an excellent point.
And if you don't believe what David's talking about, folks, call your local emergency responder and say, I dropped some mercury out of a bulb or mercury on the carpet.
Tell me what I should do.
You will be amazed at the protocol you've got to follow to get that stuff out of your house.
That's right, sir.
Well, I was just concerned about that.
You know, I understand the markup, but now that means these lamps are going to be going through the roof as far as cost, and I got to go buy them because the government told me to.
Right.
Exactly.
It's absolute.
There's not a better example of how environmentalism and this obsession with global warming is going to take away your freedom than this.
This is a perfect symbol.
We all ought to have t-shirts with light bulbs on them, the old incandescent bulb, and wear them around.
The EPA says that you've got to follow a series of steps that you should take to clean up a broken fluorescent light.
It includes opening all windows, using rubber gloves, disposing of all material in sealed bags, and removing it to a hazardous waste facility.
Welcome to Al Gore's world, everybody.
I'm Jason Lewis, in for Ryconico, Bud.
I'm Jason Infor Rush, back with more calls on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Hi, Atop, the EIB Tower.
Well, it's kind of a tower.
Here in the Northern Command, under a foot of snow, I am Jason Lewis.
Minnesota's Mr. Wright filling in for the great one.
That's Rush Limbaugh.
He'll be back on Monday.
I have a sneaky suspicion Rush is enjoying some golf.
I'm just going to go out on a limb there.
Did you see the Masters yesterday?
Did you see Phil Mickelson's putt?
He putted it from halfway back in the fairway, it seemed.
Unbelievable.
I love that.
I love that golf tournament.
We'll be watching.
I'll tell you what, I'll bet you, and I'll bet anybody.
I'll take Tiger.
You can have the rest of the field.
How's that?
1-800-282-2882.
By the way, the International Monetary Fund, another right-wing think tank, not.
The IMF now says corn ethanol accounts for half of the rise in the demand for corn worldwide, resulting in food riots across the globe.
Shrewd energy policy.
In Jefferson City, here's Barney.
You're on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Hi.
Hi, Jason.
I just had some comments about your comments on ethanol, which I think have a certain degree of validity, but I think your comments are a snapshot taken About three years ago.
Are you still there?
Oh, yes.
I'm very familiar with the ethanol industry.
I'm a Missouri state representative, and we subsidize the ethanol effort in Missouri as well.
Boy, do you?
I don't know if you saw the article or not, but about three months ago, General Motors announced on the front page of the St. Louis Post dispatch that they are building two ethanol plants, not from corn, but from used rubber tires, which are a terrible environmental hazard around the world, and animal waste, which would come from animal feedlots and agricultural industries.
Well, if that's the case, Representative, why did the energy bill mandate that we use ethanol or biofuels by the year 2022, 36 billion gallons?
If this is such a wonderful product, why General Motors, you just mentioned, they're building these plants.
We don't need a government mandate, then, do we?
Well, we do if we're going to compete against OPEC, if we're going to get the country on some road of energy independence, we need to not only look at ethanol and biodiesel, which we're considering a mandate on that now in Missouri.
Of course.
Sure.
But we also need to look at wind energy and solar energy.
We need a new one.
Let me just see if I can get you to be an honest politician.
All of which cost the consumer more now and will for years to come.
There really is no debate on that.
Now, you can buy down.
Wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
You can buy down the price with tax subsidies, but that cost me April 15th, which is coming up this weekend.
Well, ethanol and biodiesel will never be the magic silver bullets that shoot high fuel prices in the heart as long as oil prices remain high.
Ethanol and biodiesel will become efficient and cost-effective once oil prices come down to about $70 to $60 a barrel.
Maybe 80.
Representative, I hate to burst your bubble, but in truth, just the opposite is true.
When oil prices come down, you can't filibuster here.
This is a talk radio show, not the House of Representatives in Jefferson City.
The point here is when oil comes down, ethanol becomes less useful because it can't compete at that price.
When oil prices are high, then only alternative energy sources might come to market because everybody's getting gouged and you can goug them any way you want.
But what I'm telling you is, what do you think a gallon of ethanol would cost?
What do you think it would cost at the pump without the 54 cent a gallon tariff against cheaper ethanol from Brazil, without the 51 cent federal subsidy, and without the hundreds of millions of dollars that states like Missouri and Minnesota plow into ethanol plants?
What do you think the price would be at the pump?
Well, I think I know in Missouri, if you have a flex-fuel vehicle, MFA Oil Company guarantees, guarantees and have for over a year now that the price of their E85 is 20% less than regular unleaded that you buy at the pump.
They guarantee it.
I'm glad you brought up E85 because I know a little about that.
E85 is how efficient compared to unleaded gasoline?
How many miles per gallon do you get from E85 compared to regular unleaded?
It is less efficient.
Yes, you get about 20% benefits as well.
What benefits?
I'm not getting a big discount at the pump.
I'm getting 30% less efficiency.
And you, the politician, are telling me, don't worry, you're getting a benefit?
Okay, so then what do we do?
Nothing?
Just pay, old pay?
All right.
I'm glad you brought that up, sir.
The bottom line is, where do we get most of our oil in the United States?
Probably Canada.
Canada and Mexico.
North America accounts for 60% of our oil.
We have as much oil.
We have domestic oil that would last for 1,000 years.
I agree, Barney.
But the environmentalists won't let us get it.
Amen to that.
We found an area of agreement.
And that is why, with all due respect, and you're a nice guy, I'm sure, but with all due respect, there is no energy independence crisis.
I just talked about this field in North Dakota.
You mentioned offshore for crying out loud.
If Republican governors like Charlie Christ in Florida would let us drill 200 miles out, you couldn't even see the rig, we would have oil and gas in Anwar.
I mean, in Anwar, the statistics are overwhelming as much to replace the oil we import from Saudi Arabia.
And yet, in a place that's, what, 19 million acres, all we need is a 2,000-acre footprint.
It's a frozen tundra, dark 56 days out of the year, and we can't touch it.
This is an insane energy policy.
And Barney, with all due respect, simply saying we're going to replace that with more expensive alternatives is not the answer.
Higher prices in the form of a regulated tax is not the answer for American efficiency.
All right, Open Line Friday continues with me, Jason Lewis, filling in for Rush.
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