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April 11, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:21
April 11, 2008, Friday, Hour #3
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You know, we here at uh the Excellence and Broadcasting Network have conducted a public service survey.
I'm not certain if you're aware of this.
The public service survey, the gang at EIB went out and asked a number of uh big name celebrities, uh, big politicos, as it were, why the chicken crossed the road.
You've heard that question, the ubiquitous question, why did the chicken cross the road?
And so EIB, we here at EIB went out and asked some people.
For instance, so we went out and asked Dr. Seuss, why did the chicken cross the road?
Uh Dr. Seuss said, did the chicken cross the road?
Did he cross it with a toad?
Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed, I have not been told.
Rather interesting.
Yeah.
Asked uh Al Gore, why did the chicken cross the road?
I invented the chicken.
I thought that was kind of fat.
John Kerry, why did the chicken cross the road?
Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I am now against it.
It was the wrong road to cross, and I was misled about the chicken's intentions.
I am not for it now and will remain against it.
Why did the chicken cross the road was asked of Barbara Walters as well.
And she said, Isn't that interesting?
In a few moments, we will be listening to the chicken tell for the first time the heartwarming story of how it experienced a serious case of molting.
That's kind of odd, I thought.
They asked Bill Clinton why the chicken crossed the road, and Clinton said, I did not cross that road with that chicken.
What is your definition of a chicken?
And finally, my favorite.
They asked the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, why did the chicken cross the road?
Why are all the chickens white?
We need some black chickens.
Now you just get different answers to the same question.
I don't understand it sometimes.
Welcome back.
Third hour now up and running on the uh Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
I am Jason Lewis, greeting conversationalists across the fruited plain.
Rush will be back on Monday.
You can always check him out at Rushlimbaugh.com.
It is as Friday.
It's a veritable tradition Russia's created worldwide.
It is as always, even though the sub is here, an open line Friday.
Live from New York City.
It's open line Friday.
Well, of course, via New York, the Northern Command, we are digging out from a global warming snowstorm on April 11th.
Nevertheless, your sh your shot to uh dictate, as it were, or at least lead the discussion.
What you want to talk about today is open at 1800 282 2882 as we get back to the phones momentarily.
I would be remiss, my friends, if I did not mention that an important date is coming up.
That would be, oh yeah, April 15th.
For those of you that are pondering the idea of a Democrat president, a Democrat Congress, a Democrat governor, a Democrat state legislature.
Apparently you think you're undertaxed.
I guess that's what you're thinking.
You know, federal revenues last year amounted to 18.8% of the gross domestic product, which right in line with the post-World War II average.
We're not undertaxed.
We're not under taxed or ex we're overspending, to be sure, but we're not undertaxed.
Meanwhile, the politics of envy is dictating that we raise taxes yet again.
I'm going to get to those details in a moment, but Barack Obama has now employed it, along with Hillary.
Sadly, along with Mr. McCain.
They are all skeptical.
In fact, Barack Obama is pushing a bill now to rein in private sector pay for CEOs.
Now, a lot of you, you know, get upset over what a CEO makes, but you have no reticence whatsoever on what your sports hero makes.
What Barbara Streisand makes, what Brad Pitt makes.
None whatsoever.
That's fine.
No problem there.
But I don't want a guy who's worked forty years for a company, finally hits pay dirt and makes what a Hollywood star makes at 65.
That's very odd to me.
Now, I think are some of these executives overpaid, I suppose, but it's none of my business.
And I'll tell you why it's none of my business.
I'm not forced to subsidize them.
If I don't like what a company pays its employees or its CEO, I don't have to shop there.
More importantly, I don't have to buy their stock.
This is a matter left to the shareholders of a firm.
If they think their CEO is ripping them off, they can vote in a new board of directors, and they can appoint new officers.
There's no need for government.
If it weren't for the politics of envy, we wouldn't even be rationalizing this.
And yet, Barack Obama says he's concerned over big pay packages at Bear Stearns and Countrywide Financial Corporation.
John McCain adds, uh, he's outraged, outraged by the the head of Bear Stearns cashing in, and the head of countrywide and his co-conspirators making huge amounts of money.
Unconscionable, Says the pro-free market tax cutting Republican nominee?
Doesn't sound like it.
Sounds a bit like Hillary.
Now I'm I'm confused here.
Because all three of these presidential wannabes are the same ones supporting the bailout for Bear Stearns via the Fed and countrywide via bailing out foreclosures.
Who do you think benefits if the government comes in with $20 billion to pay off people who've been foreclosed upon?
The people holding the paper.
So they bail these people out and then they condemn them.
Well, here's a novel idea, Hillary and John and Barack.
If you're worried about these companies mismanaging their assets, don't bail them out and let them go under.
Then there won't be any CEO to pay.
We can't have that.
We're the government.
We're here to provide security.
This is the insanity of this sort of government intervention.
We talked a little bit about it yesterday.
And this is the insanity that's going to lead, ironically enough, to greater tax increases.
They're going to condemn the CEO pay, then bail them out, then say we've got to raise taxes to fund the essentials of government.
You know, bailing out the companies we condemn.
You know, I I happen to be one of those old fashioned classical liberal sorts of guys, kind of a uh uh, you know, in the Lockean tradition of what liberalism used to be, real liberalism before Roosevelt made it a dirty word.
Liberalism means you love liberty.
And that means companies are free to succeed or fail.
I say we don't bail them out, and we don't beat the tar out of them with regulations and taxes and let the winner survive.
Let the loser go by the wayside as the market would dictate.
The Democrat version, and all too often the Rhino version, Republican and name only version, is no, no, no, we won't let them fail, and we won't let them succeed.
We will just control everything through regulations and bailouts.
And then of course we get to pick the companies we want to subsidize.
And this is all going to raise taxes on all of the other small businesses that really make the economy go that aren't that aren't deemed too big to fail.
The domino effect.
Can't let them fail.
Tax day is coming up, and it's programs like these and these promises that will drive up your taxes, and especially, of course, on the rich.
I want you to be clear about this.
I want you to be very, very clear about this.
We are now embarking upon the largest tax increase in the history of the United States.
If they if Congress lets the Bush tax cuts expire, that cut rates for every bracket, it would trigger the largest tax increase in the history of the country.
1.9 trillion over seven years.
Seven years.
That's according to former chairman of the tax writing House Ways and Means Committee, Representative Bill Archer.
1.9 trillion over seven years that would raise taxes on 115 million taxpayers, return to the tax rolls, 8 million low and middle income families who now pay no taxes, triple, triple the dividends tax, double the capital gains tax.
That ought to be good for the market.
And if you think it's just gonna soak the rich, you better think again.
Here's what the tax increase would do.
The marginal tax rates would rise across the board, 13% for the highest income households, but 50% for the increase in tax rates faced by the lowest income household.
Because here's the dirty little secret of the Bush tax cut.
I was in favor of it, still am, but it did make the tax code more progressive, which is a bad idea.
See, I believe in raising revenue neutrally, that if you're going to raise revenue, everybody ought to share in funding that program.
That means a flat tax.
Some of you are big fans of the sales tax, national sales tax.
Regardless, it ought to be revenue, it ought to be neutrally raised.
But Bush actually gave a larger tax cut to the bottom end of the scale, cutting their bracket by 50% from 15 to 10.
Don't hear about that with Katie Kirk.
Don't see that on the NBC Nightly News.
If anybody's watching, that is, the marriage penalty will be reimposed.
The child credit cut by $500 per child, meaning your taxes going up.
The estate tax will come back from near extinction with a top rate of 55% and an exempt amount of only 600,000.
Most businesses are valued over that, so if you want to pass on your business, you can forget about that with the new estate tax kicking in.
This is what the this is what we're talking about here.
Yeah, but the rich, I mean, that's that's we can just tax the rich, can't we?
Well, I got some bad news for you.
You're probably the rich, and the rich are already being soaked.
The greatest lie in my life as an adult in the political arena is the notion, the Oliver Stone notion, the conspiracy that the rich don't pay taxes.
What it's just an flat out canard.
I don't care whether you look at the IRS statistics or the tax foundation statistics, it simply isn't true.
Give you an example.
The top one percent of income earners in America, according to the IRS from 2005 tax returns.
Those lucky duckies making 365,000 a year or more, they pay 39.58% of all the income tax collected.
That's 40%.
Now compare that with the bottom ninety-five percent of income earners.
The bottom ninety-five percent, they pay the same.
They pay 40%.
So you've got the top one percent, the rich, 365K and above, paying 40% of the load, and you've got the bottom 95% paying 40% of the load.
Who's getting off scot-free?
The bottom 50% of taxpayers pay only three percent of the federal income tax collections.
The bottom 30% have zero liability.
Zip zero nodded.
They pay no taxes at all, which quite frankly is not healthy for a uh a republic.
Everybody ought to share in the burden.
Otherwise, people are willing to load, top load the burden on somebody else once people are off the tax rolls.
If you're off the tax rolls, hey, raise taxes, I don't care, just do it on somebody else.
And throwing in payroll taxes doesn't change much.
The top 20 percent of income earners, people making uh, let's see, about sixty-five, sixty-eight thousand and above.
They pay sixty-eight percent of all taxes, including Social Security payroll taxes.
And these are the people that the Democrats have in their crosshairs.
And I don't think sixty-eight thousand, or for that matter, depending on where you're living, a hundred, two hundred thousand dollars if you're trying to fund your child's college education, trying to save for retirement.
That's not rich.
That's not rich.
You know, if these rich folks who have billions to uh to waste, the Warren Buffett's, the Bill Gates, I mean, who pick your favorite liberal uh who's wealthy, the Clintons for that matter, Barbara Streisand.
If they really want to raise more revenue for the government, what's stopping them?
Representative John Campbell of California has now introduced the put your money where your mouth is act that will allow on the individual tax uh uh return you to make additional contributions.
Now you can already do that, but it's just not on the 1040.
So I say have at it.
And let's see where Gore and Clinton and Streisand and Buffett, let's see where their extra contributions are.
Why is it they got to wait for you to contribute before they're willing to contribute?
Doesn't sound very charitable to me.
18 after the hour, Jason Lewis in for Rush Limbo on the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
Hey, this is pretty cool.
Where did we get the audio of Ted Kennedy cashing in the taxes?
I like it.
Yes, America is undertaxed.
And by the way, not only would the Bush tax cuts expiring be the largest tax increase, Barack Obama's got a plan to spend 1.4 trillion dollars more over the next five years.
That's $300 billion more a year.
Where would it come from?
Well, we'll just tax the rich.
There isn't enough money there.
23 after the hour, 1800, 282, 2882, Jason Lewis in for rush.
He'll be back on Monday.
In the meantime, Philadelphia and Gill is on the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
Hello, Jason.
As a certified uh Operation Chaos Commander, Commando, having received my free EIB uh hat and t shirt.
Fabulous.
I'm gonna ask you, buddy, what are you so upset about?
I mean, come on, buddy.
The uh government already tells you how much water you can put on your feces when you flush the toilet.
Why are you so upset about that they want to tell you what kind of light bulb to buy?
Get over it, buddy.
They already t can they control every little aspect of the state.
Because Sheryl Crow now wants to tell me how much toilet paper I can use.
That's where I draw the line personally.
He was joking there.
She was joking, okay?
Oh, I see.
This stuff is serious, though.
Let me give you a little background.
I own a small engineering firm, and I am on the front line to this uh this this war against political correctness and the uh global warming issue.
Right.
There is something called lead L E E D. Did you ever hear of that?
It's an it's an architectural related organization, is that right?
That's correct.
It's urban planning or something.
Yeah, leadership and energy efficient design.
And it's administered by an organization called the USGBC, which stands for the United States Green Building Council, of which unfortunately I have to tell you I'm a member.
Uh feeding the beast, eh?
Well, I'll tell you what, in my industry, you either play along or you're out of the game.
And what lead is, it's uh it's where is Atlas Shrugged when we need her?
Yeah, well, you know, either read the book or you didn't.
Either get it or you don't.
But the point is.
Well, the essence the essence of the book was you don't play the game.
You create your own world, but of course that's easier said than done.
But people are sheep.
We are being herded and corraled in what this is really all about is the end of individualism in America.
Well, give us a concrete example.
Give us a concrete.
Are you in urban planning?
Are you an engineering?
Are you in building architecture?
What do you do?
I'm in engineering.
All right.
So what have you seen as an example that would give us a concrete microcosm of what you're talking about?
Okay.
Well, the craziest thing I can think of is that there are people putting lawns on their roofs.
They plant grass on their roof.
What kind of grass?
Well, I don't know, Sasamoa, I guess they call it.
I don't know.
Could be the smoking kind.
Yeah, well, no, I I guess that would actually get points.
The point is that that there is there it's like it's like grade school.
It's when you were in grade school.
If you got between you know, if you got between a 60 and 70, you got a D, 70 and 80, you got a C, an 80 and 90, you got a B. Okay, the USGBC has come up with a greening system.
And they have certified silver, gold, and platinum.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
If you get enough points, if like you're willing to put grass on the roof of your building, if you're willing to put less parking spaces in your parking lot than you needed, forcing your people to take a train or a bus.
If you're willing to put a bike rack in front of your your business, okay, each one of those gets a point.
Let's let's let's see where we're going with this, because uh the this I would categorize this, and this in envelopes the architects, the builders, the engineers, everybody, but it's something that that that is referred to these days as the smart growth movement or new urbanism, and it is a scheme of all schemes.
You have people like David Rusk, you know, cities without suburbs, the Bible of this movement, and basically what it is, it's urban growth boundaries on crack.
What they want people to do and what they're driving people to do, again, in the name of the environment and and and you know, we're we're gobbling up all the land and global warming, is they want to put up these massive urban growth boundaries, and they've actually done it in Portland, and it's been a disaster in many ways if you're trying to afford a house there, and put up these urban growth boundaries and tell everybody you gotta live in a compact, high-rise condo or apartment.
We're gonna put a light rail station in there, and any notion of being free to have a three-car garage out in the suburbs is history.
Yeah, you're absolutely that is part of the equation, but the equation is it's multitask.
This is like a hydra.
It's got a hundred different arms, okay?
And what you're referring to is actually not part of the USGBC movement.
It the U USGBC is greater is part of a greater movement, okay?
And I really Well, what I'm what I'm referring to is a philosophical umbrella under uh to put all of these examples you've got.
And it is this new urbanism, smart growth nonsense that is redesigning homes, redesigning neighborhoods, redesigning how we travel, all in the name of environmental collapse, which of course is not happening.
Well, if I could introduce you to the word, the word is sustainability.
Right.
It's the magic word.
That is the magic word.
Yes.
It's about the the and the uh pretext is that the way we live now, everything you're talking about, the energy we consume, the way we consume it, the materials we use to build all these things that it's not sustainable.
We are gonna bequeath, we are gonna bequeath to our children and their children a lower standard of living in the name of Al Gore.
It is an open line Friday program of the Rush Limbaugh version.
He will be back on Monday, of course.
The Rush Limbaugh Show continues with me for now, Jason Lewis sitting in for the big guy.
Rushlimbaugh.com, always up and running, 24-7 tons of great stuff there.
Check that out.
In the meantime, the contact line here is always 1-800-282-2882.
Let's try Stewart Florida and Bob.
You're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Hi, Mr. Lewis.
How are you?
Could not be better.
I hope so.
I hope so.
Now I am an eighty-seven-year-old person, and I think the problem with the world are our people.
That's what we're all trying to talk about.
Now, this health plan, in my opinion, I think it's the bait that's going to hide the hook.
If the government can control all your medical records, if we have the right to deny persons to be born, then we should have the right to choose who should live.
And we become a problem, and all the monies are going to we who are older than security.
And we contribute nothing but maybe to our families were lovable and all, but w there will come a time when they'll find that we are expendable.
Well, there's no question.
There's no question there's a culture of death among the uh Cavorkian crowd.
Exactly right.
That and those who uh they they don't want their phones tap, they don't want this, they don't want that.
But if you give the government the right to know your medical history, and they know that that green reaper is around.
If he comes, you're going to save money for the government or whomever.
It's an awful way to think.
But the people part.
You're giving us the extreme version of government induced rationing.
Exactly.
What they do is they say, Bob, you just you're we are not going to allow you to have this procedure because you're 87.
And we've got young people we need to save.
Exactly right, Mr. Lewis.
I am 100% look.
I am one of many, many, much, many, many, many disabled veterans.
I can't do what what uh uh what I I other people can do.
I'm a hundred percent disabled.
I'm course in the money uh coverment money.
Social security and the and all like that.
If I route away, I make room for another little seed to be playing or something.
You are right, Mr. Lewis, one hundred percent.
Well, the debate here or the chasm here between people who actually believe in liberty and believe it's the only condition property humans and the liberal left is one of the individual versus the community.
I don't care how many billions of dollars you have, that doesn't mean the mob has a right to take it because it would benefit more people.
I don't care how much you know how many dollars it would take to save your life, as long as you can pay for it, I don't have the right to deny you medicine.
But if you believe in the community, kind of a kind of a utilitarianism, a benthamite utilitarianism, why then people are just kind of cogs in a wheel and we're looking out for the common good, not the individual right.
Exactly.
It's the bait that hides the hook, Mr. Lewis, and if we're if we go for it, if we go for that free medicine, we may as well sign our rear end over to the government because you got it.
It's all numbers, sir.
Stay on your governor down there for me, will you, Bob?
Stay on your governor down there for me.
Mr. Christ is sounding more and more like a Democrat these days.
Well, uh uh listen, uh let me say one thing, please.
I give the troops, which I was one of the many, many of us.
I God bless you, kids, go for Brooke.
And remember, Kilroy was there before you.
Go for it, son.
I God bless you, men and women.
Bob, thanks to you.
Thanks to you for all your service as well, my friend.
I do appreciate the the call.
You bring up a great point, too.
I mean, the the so-called civil libertarians are up in arms over the commander in chief.
Remember Article Two of the Constitution, matters of war and peace shall be reserved to the President of the United States.
And the idea that we've never spied in America.
Uh, guess what George Washington did with spies when he caught them?
He got a swift military tribunal and he hanged them.
We've had military tribunals through the Civil War.
I mean, no one, no one violated the so-called civil rights of their opponents more than Abraham Lincoln, taking away you know, habeas corpus, shutting down the press, jailing people indefinitely, and he's venerated.
And you get all these civil libertarians that Bob mentions concerned about the president wanting to spy on international communications of suspected terrorists.
As though, you know, what what attorney general at the time authorized more wiretaps than any other?
I believe it was RFK.
And there was no FISA court then.
You know what Bobby Kennedy did?
He went to J. F. Kennedy said, I think we got a problem.
These guys might be commies, they might be Castro, put a bug on 'em.
That was it.
And if it was done for national security, every individual in those days, Republican and Democrat realized there was a constitutional right for the president to conduct war and spying was a part of war.
Fast forward to today, and thanks to Jimmy Carter and the ridiculous nineteen uh seventy-eight FISA law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which says, oh no, no, no.
The judiciary will fight the war.
Article three governs here, and you got to go to a court.
And you've had to plead and beg, and we subordinate Article II and the commanders in chief powers to a bunch of robed justices.
Now, the the ACLU and the civil libertarian crowd are all up in arms.
How dare you listen in on these communications?
And yet, they cheerlead every April 15th for more government.
This is the same law and order liberals that want smoking bans.
Environmental regulations, global warming initiatives that in one hour violate more of your rights, including property rights, than spying on the enemy could ever hope to do in five years.
The double standard, the total hypocrisy of the so-called civil libertarian left is astounding to me.
So I'm glad you brought it up, Bob, so I could rant there.
I feel better already.
I don't need my blood pressure medication today.
Scottsdale, Arizona.
Rick, you're on the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
Hi.
Hello.
Hello, sir.
Jason, nice to hear you.
Uh sir.
I'm calling with regards to the gasoline prices, and um, it's been a sore spot of mine.
I'm a pilot for an airline, so we're getting just absolutely raked across the coals with regards to these uh petroleum prices.
What what amazes me, sir, about them is as far back as two thousand one, Senator Ron Wyden out in Oregon presented to a committee headed by Carl Levin sworn deposition testimony that the oil companies uh needed to cut refinery capacity to get their profits up.
They have done that systematically, and uh whenever the uh senators talk about we're gonna see if the people are getting gouged, they know what's going on.
This this oil, it it does not have to be as high as it is.
Well there are so many errors.
Anything you you're you're running on very, very dangerous terrain when you're quoting Carl Levin and Ron Wyden, who never saw a profitable business they did not like.
Uh let me ask you a question.
Do oil companies in most cases buy the oil at the spot price, or do they r uh explore and find it?
Well, they do a little of both, but my my problem is not with the oil companies.
My problem lies that uh in this capitalistic society, the the mechanism which regulates prices normally is competition.
The government has taken away the ability of anyone to compete with the major oil companies.
Such as who would compete with them?
Who would compete with them?
Yeah.
Uh I live in Arizona.
They have been trying to get permits for a refinery for ten years, yet through the EPA, they cannot find it.
Well, wait a minute now.
I I agree with you on that, but you just said a moment ago, quoting these two socialists, quite frankly, that it's the oil companies themselves that don't want to increase refining capacity.
That's not true.
They've been trying to build that refinery in Arizona, as you point out, for decades, and it is the environmentalists that are stopping it, not the oil companies.
Correct.
I understand that.
But what I'm saying is no one, no one can build one.
The government is the problem in this is how I see it.
They say that, you know, they're gonna look into it, yet they're the problem.
The EPA and the governmental regulations do not allow people to build refineries.
The oil companies, the oil companies got the price down to where they want it.
Now they increase capacity in existing refineries at a rate that maintains that spread.
They have admitted that.
But as far as what is the single biggest cost of a gallon of gasoline?
Forty to forty-five percent is the crude oil.
I think it's a little bit more than that.
Well, that that was a figure I saw approximately.
Now remember, if you want to pump gasoline in in some states, you have to comport with the formula.
Some of them have ethanol mandates, Which is not easy to ship because of water distillation.
You've got all of these mandates.
You can't build a refinery.
You can't drill an Anwar or off the Gulf Coast or any place or not the Gulf Coast, but the Outer Continental Shelf.
You can't drill there, and yet we sit turn around and blame the oil companies for the price.
It's not the oil companies.
First officer, I I am agreeing with you.
I'm totally agreeing.
It is not the oil companies.
They are doing what business do.
They're getting their their price up to where they can make money.
My problem is not, I'll repeat, not with the oil companies, it's with the government.
Up in Canada recently they found over a trillion uh barrels in I I think it's called sand oil or shale oil.
Right.
Yet yet we can't punch a hole in the ground.
And and uh you may have misunderstood.
My problem is not with the oil companies.
I thought you you were you sounded to me with the beginning of the call as though there was this grand oil conspiracy to drive the the price up and to keep you know gouging people.
The the fact of the matter is throughout the nineteen nineties we had abnormally low gasoline and oil prices adjusted for inflation and the oil companies were not a good investment uh compared with the rest of the SP 500, for instance.
Now they're making a little more money.
But you're you're fundamentally right, and this is why the the so-called energy crisis, Rick, is a totally manufactured political crisis.
That is exactly my point.
All of this is unnecessary.
If these people that I I wait in on to talk to you, I just put two dollars and forty cents a gallon in my car.
This is totally unnecessary.
It's all government um caused through one, the weakening of the dollar is the reason the crude is going up.
So I have one of the reasons.
And then the second is we can increase the supply, and then the other side of it is what you just mentioned.
Part of the cost is refining capacity.
America right now cannot even refine what we need.
We have to import, and don't quote me exactly, somewhere between ten and fifteen percent of our refined gasoline is imported.
Yeah, that's true.
I couldn't agree more.
I mean, you're you're spot on.
Rick, thanks for c the call.
I got to move, but I appreciate all your points.
I'm Jason Lewis, in for rush on this open line Friday.
Don't go away.
Back with Minnesota's real anchor man, Minnesota's Mr. Wright, that would be me, Jason Lewis, filling in for America's Anchorman, Rush Limbaugh, Rush is out today.
We'll be back on Monday.
Mark it on your calendars, as they say.
In the meantime, check out Rush Limbaugh.com.
It is uh it has been great to uh fill in once again, and we will continue right up through the top of the hour.
But I want to thank everybody back in New York for all their help and all the gang here.
I'll get to that a little later.
Won't uh bore you with the details, but they do great work here at the Excellence and Broadcasting Network in Denver, Colorado.
Paul, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Jason, hi, how are you?
I'm good, sir.
Last time we talked, it was about Casey Martin.
Oh, yes.
Yes, yes.
That was the case where the I believe the judge was from Oregon or where she was situated in Oregon, where the federal judge knew a little bit more about what it takes to play golf than oh, I don't know, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicholas.
You know, the guys that really do it.
So she arbitrarily decided, um, well, we're going to redo the game of golf where walking is not a component.
Hmm.
Hey, the reason I called, and congratulations, by the way, for being asked to sit in for rush, because that's a big step.
Yeah, it's a great idea.
Um this this idea of recession.
Um I travel a little bit, not a great deal, but I've you know traveled from uh Denver and I traveled to Minneapolis and I traveled to Arizona and Florida.
Honest to goodness, two things that are almost impossible to do is one is find a parking spot, and the other is to rent a car.
And if you go to a big retail store, you're parking way out in the middle of nowhere and walking in because there are so many people at airports and restaurants and retail stores that I don't know if I know what the definition of recession is, but it is not evident to me that it's really occurring.
Well, that's easy to explain.
That's because they built uh core stadium in Low Town or Lowdown, and uh that re you know that multiplier Keynesian effect reinvigorated all of Denver.
It wouldn't have happened without the taxpayer funded stadium, don't you see?
Right.
I made that up.
Uh that's what they sold Yon out there.
But again, you know, it's it's not it's not inexpensive to fly, but airports are just packed, and if that's any sign of uh I the recession to me is a mindset, and I think a lot of people are being told we're in a recession, and if you believe that, then yes we are, but if you don't, we aren't.
and I I just refuse to believe.
Well, technically we're not.
I mean, I can't remember the exact definition.
How many quarters does it take for actual negative GDP to be officially a recession?
Uh we're nowhere close to that, but we may be, and some people think we're already starting that.
It's hard to say.
I think there is a stalling effect because I think the market and a lot of business decisions are psychological and time preference related.
And if you're taking a look at a 1.9 trillion dollar tax increase in 2010, if you're taking a look at the capital gains rate going up, the dividends rate going up, you're taking a look at your own personal income going down, and all of these regulatory induced tax increases on the energy crisis that is not a crisis, but government regulations killing it, on what we're doing to the housing market, we're making things worse, actually.
A lot of people are in kind of a a holding pattern.
And I think there is some evidence of that.
Mm-hmm.
And now not to mention what the Federal Reserve is doing with regard to reigniting inflation.
I mean, you know, it's going to depend upon the confidence the markets and businessmen and women have for investment in the future based on their actual rate of return.
And if my rate of return is going to go down on everything I invest because of the statutory tax rates, because of the cost of doing business, because of government mandates, then I'm going to invest less.
Right.
So the last point the last point I want to make is uh uh the last couple of days out here, at least in Denver, we've had an awful lot of global warming falling on our mountains and on the on the lowlands.
Yeah, say all over the uh the Rocky Mountain West and the upper Midwest, uh somebody ought to fly up Al and have them see what this uh white stuff is.
In April, no less.
It is unbelievable.
And then mountains in years.
I don't think you can overestimate the damage to the economy that the environmentalists and the global warming folks are having.
I really don't.
Everybody talks about being green and how wonderful it is.
The people leading the charge for that are people who have a vested interest, the light bulmanufacturers or people who who are going to get the c the carbon credits if the law is passed, and the people trading the carbon credits.
I've had a story in the Wall Street Journal, Paul.
When was it last week or two weeks ago?
A guy guys become a multi, multi-millionaire by setting up an exchange in Europe for their carbon credits.
So there are people out there who are going to fleece the system in the name of the environment that are leading the charge.
The rest of us are cost of living, the cost of doing business is skyrocketing.
And then again, you know, we're setting ourselves up with all of these uh inflationary signals we're getting.
Farm land is going way up.
In Iowa, the value of agricultural land has increased eleven percent just since September.
There may be, you know, talk about the housing bubble.
There may be another agricultural bubble in the making as we speak, with the price of ethanol, with the price of corn, with the price of the land that sustains it.
We didn't went through this in 1982, 1983, when all of these commodities uh price supports drove up the price of of uh commodities, drove up the price of land, not to mention inflation, and to wring the inflation out of the economy, the land values collapsed.
None of this is good if you're worried about the overall economy looking forward in the future, and I think that's what's weighing on the markets, Paul.
I got a break, but thanks for the call.
We'll come back and wrap things up right after this.
All right, make certain you go out and support this uh this legislation in Washington, D.C. Our statement against the environmental wackos, the light bulb freedom of choice act.
Check it out.
We'll uh repeal that portion of the uh nonsensical energy bill that passed uh last year.
My thanks to uh obviously Kit Carson and Big Ed, a man on the board back in New York, the gang here, Rob and Robert and young Master Brendan all helping me here.
My thanks to all of you.
Always a pleasure to fill in for the big guy each and every time the excellence in broadcasting network needs somebody.
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