And we're back, Rushland Boy here on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Nice to have you with us, folks, of the fastest three hours in media.
Our telephone number is 800-282-2882.
The email address, ilrushbow at eibnet.com.
When we go to the phone, some people want to talk about the subject we've been discussing recently, which is all, and gasoline prices and so forth, the energy energy costs that we all face right now.
I want to get even a little bit more cynical.
In addition to the natural cynicism I have that, well, this is not cynicism.
This is something I know.
I can't prove this, but I just know it.
I know it in my gut, and you do too.
There are people, elected officials, who expect to benefit from all the suffering, or if you don't like the word suffering, the challenges that people are facing, the anger and the decisions they're having to make here and how they change the way they live because of the price of food, the price of gasoline.
And we haven't even talked about the trucking industry yet.
But that's, you know, all this stuff is linked.
And I just saw, I was in the top of the hour break.
I was watching CNBC.
The truckers companies all had a meeting in Washington today and they're beside themselves.
$1,800 in diesel to fill up the tanks of an 18-wheeler is what the graphic on CNBC said.
Well, that's got a breaking point too at some point.
If these guys are going to charge, have to pay $1,800 every time they fill up an 18-wheeler, they're going to have to raise what they charge to transport things.
But they can only raise their price what people are willing to pay.
And if you've got smaller companies who can get by by paying $1,800 to fill up with less pain than others, all this stuff works together and it's getting near a breaking point.
And all of this, for lack of a better word, suffering.
I really believe that there are people who expect to benefit from this greatly.
And not just people who get votes.
For example, I've about had it with people who say, we need to put solar panels on the roof.
We all need to be driving a light rail.
We all need to be in mass transit.
We need to alter the way we drive and the way we travel around.
What happens if all the airlines just get put out of business?
What happens?
I'll guarantee you what will happen.
We'll have a national airline like Amtrak.
That's what'll happen.
In the interests of making sure that mode of transportation survives, the government will come along and subsidize some airline.
It'll be run by them.
And it's going to be, you know, it's going to be a mess.
The airline industry, everybody's worried about that.
We're getting to the point now.
Would you pay, if you lived here in Florida, would you pay $1,000 or $1,500 to fly coach to New York or $2,000 to fly coach?
Most people can't and wouldn't.
And what happens then?
Well, if the market were left alone, the price would come down to where people could or these places would just go out of business, one of the two.
And something would be there to pick up the slack because despite what the madcap environmentalists want, people are going to fly.
The economy requires it.
Economic growth requires expansion in all of these areas that we're talking about.
For people to have increased opportunity, increased salaries and wages and so forth, there has to be growth.
And if we start contracting in some of these businesses, that's not going to happen.
And there are people who want that.
Because that then makes more and more people dependent.
And that then convinced more and more people, okay, we need to start changing our light bulbs and unplugging our toasters when we're not using them.
And don't use the cell phones and all that garbage.
It has nothing to do with anything, but will be said to be a cure-all for this.
And the little socialist nannies who want control over as much of your daily life as they can get are going to have a wide open door to come in and do it because they'll be the only solution you have.
So it's a crucial thing.
But the internal optimist I am, based on intelligence guided by experience, these are bubbles.
And this bubble is going to burst at some point because markets work.
Now, again, I don't know how cheap oil is going to drop, and I don't know how cheap gasoline is going to drop.
But there's going to be a point where the price, whatever it gets up to, cannot be supported by the market.
And by that, I mean everybody in it.
And when that happens, one of two things has to happen.
And the one thing that's going to happen is the price is going to come down and supply is going to go up.
And there's not a shortage, despite what anybody tells you, there isn't a shortage.
Can I give you an example?
I mean, this is just, look at, who was it?
I think United Arab Emirates Airlines or some such thing just bought, I forget the number, 30 or 40 giant jumbo jets over the next 30 or 40 years.
If you look at people planning their businesses and making these purchases of major users, equipment that is a major user of fossil fuel, people are buying.
They're upgrading.
If there wasn't going to be any fossil fuel 30 or 40 years from now, you think people will be buying these airplanes?
You think manufacturers would be designing new ones?
Gulfstream, which manufactures corporate aircraft, a month ago announced the new G650.
And it's going to be the biggest corporate airplane out there aside from the Boeing business jet, which is a 737.
But it's going to be bigger.
It's going to be a little bit more fuel efficient.
They sold in the first week, they had deposits for, I think, a half million dollars.
600 deposits the first day.
600 orders.
And it's gone more.
They've had to build two.
They're going to build one factory, one plant to manufacture this new airplane.
It won't roll off the assembly line till 2012.
You can't even see one except a computer mock-up.
You can go up to Savannah where they're going to make it, and you can sit in a mock-up of the interior, but you can't see the actual airplane.
It's not even been built yet, just on the computer.
I mean, they might have a mock-up of one full size, but it's not the actual airplane.
Won't roll off till 2012.
People are lining up to buy these things left and right.
Now, I would bet that 75% of the orders are from overseas, but they're still being ordered.
Now, would you buy an airplane if you didn't think there's going to be fuel for it?
Would you make a new airplane if you didn't think there was going to be fuel for them to fly?
Of course not.
So all of the real-life indications are that there's plenty of energy out there.
And the bet is the people in this business, it's going to be plentiful and it's going to be affordably priced, all things being equal and relative.
Otherwise, these kind of expansions wouldn't be taking place.
Against all this, we have the real-world circumstances of the price of diesel, the price of gasoline.
And let's face it, most people don't fly corporate airplanes and don't have the budgets that corporations do to fly these things around.
But against all this is the news that we're going to hell in a handbasket and it's getting worse and there's no end in sight for it.
When in fact there is.
Everything here is just cyclical.
This does not ameliorate the fact that at this moment in time, it is bad news on the energy front and on the food front in a lot of places.
It's all going to bubble out and it's all going to come.
The question is, are some businesses going to have to go out of business before that happens?
Will some airlines just look at this?
Who did Delta just merge with?
Does it announce a merger with Northwest, right?
And both these companies are losing money.
It's incredible, and yet they're merging.
Okay, why?
Why are they doing this?
Efficiencies, they're combining.
They're adding to their fleet.
The more airplanes you have and the more you can fill them up, the more you can put them in the air, the more you can reduce your debt load.
But what are they going to need to do that?
They're going to need fuel.
They must be banking on the fact that there's going to be plenty of fuel, and they've got to be banking on the fact that it's going to be affordable at some point.
Otherwise, the merger does.
If you look at real-life circumstances, you see that people whose job it is to factor years in the future are making bets on the positive side.
While they're drive-by media, telling everybody how worse it's going to get, how rotten it is, how terrible it is.
And of course, it's Bush's fault or Cheney's fault or the war in Iraq's fault or what have you.
And trying to turn it into a political ⁇ or it's the speculator's fault.
Somebody's fault.
There's some cabal of people that want you to suffer.
And they're sitting there manipulating the price above and beyond the market.
That isn't the case, but there are people that want you to suffer.
There are people that want you to be challenged.
There are people that want you to be mad about this.
And there are people that want you blaming people and companies, industries for this because they will benefit.
And nine out of ten times, these are the same people who also try to convince you that they stand for you.
The little guy, the average American, you can count on them to make sure this kind of stuff doesn't happen to you.
And when it does, they're the ones in private going.
We got them right where we want them.
Be right back.
And we are back, Rush Limbaugh here at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
And as always, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
I need to make a little asterisk point.
When I mentioned that the price of jet fuel at LaGuardia at the private jet terminal is $8.08, that's way above average.
I've seen it as high as $7.52 in Palm Springs, but it probably would average between $5 and $6 right now.
Point about LaGuardia is they don't want private jets going in there because it's so crowded with commercial traffic.
The landing fees for private aircraft at LaGuardia are just prohibitively.
They just don't want you going there.
They'll let you in there.
They have to if you want to go, but you have to get a slot and you have to pay exorbitant landing fees.
I mean, I don't know what it is now, but it's exorbitant.
And the fuel price, it's all combined to keep you out of there if you're a corporate plane.
But a lot of people like it because it's so damn close to the city.
You just come across Triborough Bridge and you're in.
At any rate, Chris in Jacksonville, Florida, we'll start with you on the phones.
Hello, and welcome to the EIB Network, sir.
Hello.
Hey, happy cigar smoking conservative dittos.
Thank you, sir, very much.
I'm just curious.
I got a two-part question.
One is if supply is relatively flat or constant throughout the world, why would I'm really nervous, but why would on a given day the futures traders speculate which would drive up the price of oil?
Case in point, when the simian from Iran sent those little minions out in their little bug smashing boats, there's no way that that should have caused hostility on the airplanes.
This is an excellent point.
I unfortunately am not sufficiently informed and educated on the workings of these futures markets, the commodities market to answer your question.
All I can do is share with you the perplexity.
Okay, so the Ahmadinezad.
Ahmadinezad, Iran, do you know Iran has the largest oil refinery in the world?
If Ahmadineizad wants the price of oil up, all he's got to do is threaten to blow up Israel.
And the speculators go, oh, no, Price of oil goes up.
Markets roiled.
If Ahmedineizad wants to raise the price of oil again, all he's got to do is the great Satan of the United States.
If we're attacked, we're nuking somebody.
Oh, no, speculators go nuts.
And this is not just in the speculators market.
Do you not get a little tired of every time some single economic report comes out on the supply of chickens and the stock market?
Oh, go, no.
And the stock market sell off.
And the way this stuff is explained defies common sense to me.
The way the stock market works, all the futures market.
I do have a little blurb here that just cleared the Wall Street Journal wire.
The surge in food and energy prices is being driven by constrained supply and growing demand in developing countries rather than an investment bubble, according to the majority of economists in the latest Wall Street Journal forecasting survey.
And they're basically absolving from blame the speculators.
They are saying, the journal survey says that most economists say food and energy prices and the surge in those prices is not due to speculators, but rather the old standbys of supply and demand.
The supply, that's an interesting thing.
You know, supply can be defined in a number of ways.
Look at the supply of oil we have that we're not getting.
So there's all kinds of oil in all kinds of places that some people say still the price isn't high enough to go get it and make a profit.
Others say you can't go get it because of environmental and federal government regulations and prohibitions and moratoriums, blah, blah, blah.
So you deal with the supply that's actually being brought out of the ground every day and the supply that's being refined.
And in that case, there's no question there's an increasing demand for it as these poor countries start getting richer.
People in them get rid of the rickshaws and get rid of the bicycles.
They want to drive cars.
They need gasoline.
And you're talking about gazillions of people in China and India who might be experiencing increased economic circumstances.
Jim in Santa Rosa, California, glad you called.
Welcome to the program, sir.
Hi, Rosh.
Mega Diddles from Wine Country.
Thank you, sir.
Hey, I heard something.
I just a question regarding hedge funds.
And what I'd heard is that when they normally buy futures, commodities, whatever, they're required to put up a 50% collateral or financial collateral.
But when they buy oil futures, they're only required to put up 5%.
Does that sound right?
No, but again, I hate to say this, but I have to.
I don't really know how the commodities and futures markets work on that basis.
So I don't know what the reason for that would be.
I would only speculate, and I couldn't possibly.
So on the surface of the world.
I would just think that this would enable them to invest a lot more money in oil futures to really drive it up.
It would require them to.
And your theory is if they had to put 50% down, they wouldn't be speculating it as high.
Correct.
And so the price wouldn't be going up as high.
Yeah, you know, the speculators are getting their share of blame here.
But as I said, the Wall Street Journal just issued this survey of economists.
No.
But, again, I hate to say this, but I have to.
I don't really know how to say this.
Oh, you need to turn your radio down there, Jim.
Work.
Work on that basis.
I know everybody likes to hear themselves on the radio, Jim.
I've been there.
You got to turn the radio down, though.
He's captivated listening to himself on the radio.
Wall Street Journal just said: survey of a lot of economists.
The speculators, the commodities market has nothing to do with these price increases.
Strictly a function of supply and demand.
Well, I don't know.
I'm getting suspicious of all these surveys of economists because every damn time we get an economic report, these people are surprised.
Unemployment claims go down.
Unexpected.
First quarter economic growth, 0.6%.
Total shock.
Economists expecting recession.
So, a survey of economists, hell's bells, folks.
Everything's so damn political now, anyway, that science has become politicized.
Economics clearly is.
So, without knowing who these people are and what their agenda is, yeah, it's tough to put a lot of weight on it.
Bob in Charleston, South Carolina.
Nice to have you, sir.
Hello.
Yes.
Hello.
Thank you for taking my call.
You bet.
Yeah, I want to talk about the sales tax.
Yes, on that, being a truck driver, our trucks get like six top seven miles per gallon.
Right.
And we put on a minimum 2,500 miles.
You know, some of these over-the-road drivers, and some of them are probably smiling now, calling me a slacker.
Point being, if somebody puts in 2,500 miles per week, okay, and you multiply that out, a driver is getting $50 more in his pocket per week.
Yeah.
$200 per month, $600 per summer, another stimulus package for a truck driver.
And there's a lot of trucks out there.
Yeah, and this is because of the difference.
The diesel price has risen far faster than the gasoline price has.
And these guys, you know, $1,800 a fill-up, it would make a huge difference, a gas tax holiday.
There's no question it would.
Back in a second.
Making more sense in five seconds than your average host says in an entire week.
Rush Limbaugh.
Half my brain tied behind my back, just to make it fair.
And we go back to the phones.
Houston, Texas.
This is Bill.
Superb to have you with us, sir.
Hello.
Hey, good to hear, Rush.
Hey, just thinking about it, you know, and I've been thinking about this for a long time.
And as I watch the gas pump go up and I watch all of these energy commodities around me, such as our electric bill, you look at what Enron did not too long ago, and I thought we learned our lesson with Enron, but I think we're seeing the same thing.
The exact same thing when it comes to paying our energy bills.
You know, why is it half as much per kilowatt hour in a city like San Antonio, where it's twice the price in Houston?
Same electricity, same power plant, but my goodness, something's wrong here.
And there's one person winning here, and it's the traders, and it's the trade managers, because every time they change their job, they up their salary 30%.
They do that probably every six months.
The banks snatch them up.
So those people are winning, and all we're doing is paying the bill when it comes to electricity.
When it comes to gas, the gas traders are making their 30% salary increase every six months.
And we're just getting sick and tired of it down here in Texas.
Well, I wouldn't call this synonymous with Enron.
I mean, Enron was an accounting disaster.
Enron was selling stuff that didn't exist.
But that's what the traders are doing.
The traders are literally creating something that doesn't exist, which is a panic.
That's exactly what they're doing.
Well, the panic exists.
No, the panic exists.
You know, all of these attitudes are real.
They exist.
They've been created.
Well, the global warming thing as well.
I mean, we're supposedly in this energy crisis.
And what's amazing is we have the technology.
America is a great country.
We not only have the technology here, but we have.
Look, if you want to draw a parallel here, you've got to go back to the 70s when OPEC was keeping oil off the market.
And we all thought we had a shortage.
Even back in the 70s, I can remember there were these wacko scientists telling us we only had 30 years of oil left.
Guess what?
It's been 30 years.
Yeah.
We got all kinds of oil out there.
There is no shortage.
What there is a shortage of is producing it.
We've got more oil under the ground in all parts of this planet than we know what to do with.
There's an environmental wacko movement that exists to keep it in the ground for obvious reasons, which mostly are political, disguised by their so-called concern for the planet and poethin and all of that sort of stuff.
But these people are getting away with a tax on capitalism.
Again, I don't live in Texas.
I can't address specifically the differences in price between Houston and San Antonio per kilowatt hour.
I would just be making a wild guess on that.
I don't even want to do that.
But it's interesting because the free market, deregulation, when it came to power producing, was supposed to reduce the cost of our electric bills.
And ever since these companies started, you know, deregulating, getting away from the regulated market, which was the municipalities, regulating the energy.
And I'm not saying this democratic policy of regulation is a good thing, but it seemed like there's a lot more people lining their pockets since deregulation has happened.
And Enron was basically the seed child to start that process.
And I think what's happened is some of these traders that were in the power generation market have moved over to the oil industry and said, oh, here's another energy market that we can raise and kill.
You know, I have to step in here.
There's a singular problem here.
You are blaming the businesses involved, and this is something that you've been conditioned to do.
And now you're blaming deregulation, which is something you've been conditioned to do.
And who's conditioning you to blame business and deregulation?
Well, the people who are anti-business and for regulation.
And I ask you, who are those people?
They are currently embodied en masse in what is called a Democrat Party.
Take a look at their enemies list.
Who are they going to get even with?
Big retail, Walmart, big pharmaceutical, big drug, big oil.
They're going to get big food.
That's who they're going to destroy.
Those people are making too much money.
And you sit around and you think all these executives are making all this money while your electric rates are going up and you hear what the Democrats say, amplified and echoed by the drive-by media, and you are convinced that every business is an Enron.
And every business is not an Enron.
Very few businesses are Enron.
If most businesses were Enron, the CEOs would be in jail.
This gets frustrating because there are bad actors in every walk of life.
You got cheaters in professional sports.
You got cheaters in business.
You have cheaters in prison.
You have cheaters in every, you got cheaters in the school playground.
You got little wheeler dealer 12-year-olds that are ripping off their friends with all kinds of these people are everywhere.
But to say they define An institution such as American corporate industry is a mistake and it's not going to help you at all because you're never going to be open to the truthful explanation, which is always going to be found in economics as to why prices go up and down.
Economics will explain this 99% of the time and in the end it always will because the people you're talking about end up getting caught one way or another.
It may not happen as quickly as you like.
What is lining their pockets?
What businesses are more people lining their pockets?
What does that mean?
Profit has always existed.
Thank God.
Profit is the motive.
Now, some people think that a utility ought not be profit-oriented because it's there to serve the community.
And so it ought not cost you and the community any more than it costs the utility to produce the power, the electricity, whatever they're providing you on a monthly basis.
It can't happen, folks.
People have to work at that utility.
That utility has to compete for power with other utility companies.
They have to be business people.
Business people get tarred and feathered routinely in this country.
Look at the Democrats' energy plan.
The Democrats' energy plan that they announced yesterday is anything but an energy plan.
It is a punishment.
And it's designed to appeal to people who think everybody in the world's lining up to screw them.
Remember, it wasn't long ago I did a monologue and I asked you to think back 30 years ago.
And what about America were you proud of?
We were proud of the auto industry 30, 40, 50 years ago, and you name it.
We were proud of our airline industry.
It was a big thrill to fly on TWA or American.
We were proud.
We got dressed up.
We put on coats and ties to go on airplane trips.
We were proud of the auto industry.
We were proud of the institutions and traditions that have made the country great.
Now, after 30 to 40 years of dominance in the media by liberals and people that don't particularly like this country the way it's constituted, guess what?
You hate big oil now.
You despise them.
You hate, you're being, they're trying to talk you into hating Walmart.
Tough sell.
You hate the insurance companies.
You just know they exist to screw you.
You hate the healthcare industry because you know they don't care about your well-being.
You have been told to hate the U.S. auto industry because they're making junk.
They're purposely making junk.
They want you to buy junk and they're charging through the roof for it because they don't care about you.
You are being told that some companies actually want to kill their customers.
You have been told to hate big tobacco because big tobacco exists to destroy its customer base.
Big tobacco exists to make sure as many people as possible get cancer, right?
Of course, the more of their customers die, what do they buy?
What's a dead person buy?
When's the last time you saw a cadaver walk into the 7-Eleven and say, I want a carton of Luckies?
Okay, I know.
So big tobacco, they have diversified, and now they own big cookie like Oreo, Nabisco, right?
So now they're killing you with sugar and trans fat.
So big oil, big tobacco, they're all trying to kill us.
This is what people think.
They're all trying to screw us and rip it.
And we hate our country and we despise it.
Or being taught to.
When in fact, none of these industries has that as an objective at all.
These industries have obstacles to doing business at an affordable price each and every day.
In large part, you can find them sitting in the United States Senate and the U.S. House with their various oversight committees and bringing these people in and say, why are you killing your customers?
And why are you lying to us?
And meanwhile, the very people in the House and Senate and these committees who are interrogating these people who take risks that you and I can't understand and would never take ourselves in order to bring products to the market at an affordable price.
These people sit in judgment of them and they couldn't produce a drop of gasoline for your car if their life depended on it.
They couldn't design an airplane and get off the ground and build it and hire people to do it if their life depended on it.
These people wouldn't know how to come up with a drug to help you with the flu or the common cold or penicillin that you need for an infection.
They couldn't do any of this and yet they sit there as experts in all of this and tell these people who have risked everything in a lot of cases how to do what they do.
And then the Democrats in this energy crunch come up with an energy bill.
Harry Reid presents it to the Senate yesterday.
And all it is is a massive tax increase on energy companies.
It doesn't produce a drop of oil.
It doesn't produce a drop of gasoline.
It doesn't create one light bulb, even a compact fluorescent.
It doesn't produce one automobile.
It doesn't produce a battery.
It doesn't come up with anything so-called alternative.
It just taxes.
Windfall profits tax on big oil.
However, big oil, big oil can avoid the windfall profits tax if it puts the profit into alternative fuels.
I'm sorry.
If big oil puts the profit into alternative fuels, guess what they can't do?
Drill and explore for more oil.
Guess what else is going to happen?
Windfall profits tax on big oil?
They're just going to stop producing oil in the United States, subject to the tax.
And so our production will fall even more.
People will always avoid taxation when they can, and all business is a worldwide business.
And all executives, like any other executive in the world, is going to go wherever he can to lower his cost of doing business as low as it can be, which is why the truckers are upset because they have to have diesel.
They have to have it.
They can't lower their cost of doing business.
They have to try to pass on those increased costs.
And sometimes they can't pass them all on and they take the hit.
And yet you've been told to hate big truck too because big truck pollutes and big truck is dangerous and big truck drives your little hybrid off the highway.
Plus big truck generally is conservative.
It can't trust them.
This business of hating deregulation, hating big business, avoid the programmed effort and technique to make that happen to you because the people who are against deregulation are the regulators.
Those are people in bureaucracy.
Those are people in government.
Republican, Democrat, I don't care.
And when they regulate, there's just a without any legislation, when they're given power to regulate our lives sitting in some bureaucracy, what that means is they have the power to reduce and restrict our freedom.
Regulations are simply chains on freedom, disguised as the government caring for us.
That's a crock.
Here's another thing, ladies and gentlemen.
While you're being told to hate big pharmaceutical and big oil and big tobacco and big retail and big everything else, who are you being told to love?
Who are you being conditioned to think is the only institution, what is the only institution, that's going to protect you from all these predators that are trying to screw you?
Government.
You're being told to love government.
They care for you.
They care about you.
You're being told to love candidates who care for you while they're out destroying them.
By the way, I was in error a moment ago.
I said that these businesses do not line their pockets, that the profit motive is the profit motive.
I was mistaken.
There is a business, quote unquote, that exists for many reasons among them to line the pockets of the people in it, and it's called U.S. politics.
You explain to me how some schlub who doesn't have a dime, gets elected to the House of Representatives, earns whatever he earns in there, 140 grand, 10 years later, has a net worth of 2 or 3 million.
Explain to me how that happens.
If somebody's pockets are not being lined, I would simply ask those of you who have all of this venom aimed at private sector business people who are producing, taking risks, avoiding the obstacles or fighting the obstacles placed in front of them, but reserve some of that venom for the people actually doing what you think is happening out there.
We had a call to the caller from Houston want to talk about the deregulated market.
Would somebody explain to me where the energy market's deregulated?
I don't see it.
Let me explain this, folks.
We can't drill.
We can't refine.
We can't transport without government involvement through regulations and taxes.
The permit process, it can take years to get permission to displace one flamingo.
The market extends well beyond the U.S., as I have said.
We're hamstringing ourselves.
What deregulated market?
Somebody show me where it is.
You want to influence a global market in a more significant way, then we have to participate in that market in a more significant way.
We need to become net producers.
Talked to a guy who just got back from Qatar the other day.
He couldn't believe Dubai.
He couldn't believe what's going up over there.
All the construction, everything going wild.
He said, you know what?
They don't have to deal with any environmentalists.
They just build and they do it right and they take care of the environmental concerns because they want what they're building to last and they want people to buy the stuff and live in it.
We have tried it the liberal way, folks.
We're trying the liberal way right now.
They have stopped us from drilling.
They have stopped us from refining.
We've been doing this for four decades.
The Democrat energy policy has been in place for four decades.
They have trashed the oil companies.
They have trashed the American consumer for four decades.
We are where we are.
They don't want to take the blame for this.
They want to blame big oil.
The restrictions, regulations, obstacles are in our way thanks to liberalism.
We'll be back after this.
And that's it, folks.
Tomorrow we'll be back.
Tomorrow is Open Line Friday.
Anything you wish to discuss, for the most part, we will discuss.