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Dec. 17, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:27
December 17, 2008, Wednesday, Hour #2
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Greetings, my friends, and welcome back.
It's Rush Limbaugh from Ohia Top, the EIB building in Midtown Manhattan, Rush Limbaugh and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Great to have you with us.
Telephone number 800-282-2882, the email address lrushbaugh at EIBnet.com.
We'll get back to Caroline Kennedy here in just a second.
But since I've started this role here, let me, on finances and the status of our economy and so forth, let me continue with the thought here.
I mentioned in the last hour, and I think this is crucial, all of this debt that people are piling up has resulted in the inflation of the real value of things and their real price.
For example, if you had to have the money in total to buy something, if that's the way our, and I'm not suggesting this, I'm just, this is just an illustration.
And it's really nothing more than common sense.
If you had to have the money, prices would have to come down because the people that make products, provide services, want to sell them.
But if you don't have to have the money, for example, everybody who has a mortgage thinks they own their house, you don't.
The bank or whoever the bank sold it to.
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, whoever the hell owns your mortgage owns your house.
You don't own the house till you make the final payment 30 years from now or 25 or 20 or whatever's left on your mortgage.
You don't diddly squat.
What you have is the right to make a monthly payment that lets you live in the house.
Now, as I said, we as a society made that decision that this was going to be one of the definitions of the American dream.
Fine and dandy.
Do not misunderstand.
I'm not suggesting that we eliminate debt.
We couldn't do a lot of what we do without it.
There's irresponsible debt, and the irresponsible debt has led to the inflation of the real price and value of things.
And it's also led to a sense of entitlement by people that is going to destroy a lot of things that are then going to have to be rebuilt.
I mentioned $300 for a band-aid in a hospital or whatever the real price is.
I mean, you know, $600 for a toilet seat in a military jet.
All of this results because the illusion is that somebody else is paying for it.
In the real world, if you went to your nearest drugstore and a single band-aid cost you $300, you wouldn't buy it.
In the hospital, you've got no choice, but you can't afford that.
Medical care is one of these things where prices have no relationship to the customer, the patient's ability to pay for it.
And that just can't be maintained.
Now, why are band-aids $300 in a hospital?
Is it because hospital people are inherently greedy?
Because at the end of the day, we hear how they're losing money, do we not?
With $600 a bed overnight, $300 band-aids, doctors doing every conceivable test on you because they're worried you're going to sue them if they miss something when you go in for a sore throat.
The cost of getting sick here when you have to go to hospitals, it's ridiculous.
It's absurd.
And yet the people charging all this and being paid for it themselves are losing money.
And they got to go out to rich people and ask for endowments and donations to build wings in the hospital or certain rooms in the hospital in order to keep going.
They have to run around with their hands out.
They've become charities.
Universities have become charities.
Harvard, with an endowment in the double-figure billions, still runs around with its hands out.
University presidents these days don't know diddly squat about education.
They are fundraisers.
So $300 for a band-aid, because hospitals are trying to cover the uncovered costs imposed on them by government.
They have to, as a matter of law, provide care for people who can't pay, such as illegal aliens.
That's just one example.
They have to cover insurance against lawsuits, just as doctors do with medical malpractice.
And these lawsuits, by the way, are filed by another liberal group, tort lawyers, trial lawyers.
And it is liberals who are out there trying to get coverage for all of the illegal people in the country, people who are not genuine American citizens.
I mean, there is no freed lunch.
There's a house of cards out there.
Now, consider this.
If Americans did not have to give around 40% of their income to government at all levels each and every year, they wouldn't necessarily have to go into debt to the extent they do for homes and cars and colleges.
And why in the world, when you start talking about college, liberals, when they start raising hell about the cost of things, be it oil or what have you, they never target tuition.
They never target big education.
Say, you greedy SOBs, lower tuition costs.
The average American can know what they do is come up with even more ridiculous student loan programs, more debt, while creating the illusion that you have no chance in this country unless you go to college.
You have to go to college.
So we're farming all these people into college, but in the lower education levels, high school, half the people who get out of there, it seems, can't read the diploma that they are given.
So when they get to college, they're not prepared for it.
So we've got all of these illusions.
You have to do this to succeed.
You have to do that.
You have to do this.
You have to do this.
You got to have a car.
You got to have a house.
You got to have this.
You got to have that.
And at every level here, you will find liberals in government who have created all of these things.
Stop and think.
Like there's a Texas congressman named Gomert who has the most sensible idea in the midst of all of this that anybody has ever come up with.
And he was on for, was this yesterday with Jason?
Okay, good.
A tax holiday.
No FICA, no income tax.
What is it for two months?
And look, if you want to stimulate this economy, you give people two months of paying no income tax and no social security tax instead of all this printing money and borrowing money at the government level.
The government, it's a wash for them, but the money that is left over in people's back pockets is going to stimulate this economy, not money that is transferred or redistributed.
There's no new money there in the economy.
It's just being shifted.
You look at Wall Street every day.
It's a crapshoot.
We don't know what it's going to do each and every day.
And you know why?
Because the markets are being forced to look at what government is doing in order to make investments.
That ought not be where the market looks.
The market ought to be looking at what's happening in the country on Main Street.
But instead, the government has become so damn dominant and feared that the so-called private sector markets are quaking in their boots every day looking at what the Treasury Secretary is going to say, what Bernanke is going to say or do, what the president is going to say or do, what the President-Select is going to say or do.
And I guarantee you, if you want stability in the markets, you're never going to get it if the markets are forced to look at the most unstable entity in our lives today, the U.S. government, for their daily dose of advice or not advice, but the daily indication of where we're headed.
It scares the hell out of me that each and every day, the future of the country, in a lot of people's minds, depends on what government's going to do.
We're sunk.
Everybody ought to be focusing on what the American American people are the ones that make this country work, not the government.
This level of taxation that we have, it creates havoc in the economy.
It influences behavior.
You know, a lot of people who lose their homes lose them because they can't afford the property taxes.
It's not because all of a sudden they can't afford the monthly payment.
It's because they can't afford the property taxes.
Local government, local school districts are spending like never before.
We're getting nothing for it.
I know people whose property taxes have gone up 100% in the last few years because it's a government entity.
And of course, it's the schools.
And what are the schools?
Well, the schools are the children.
And of course, when the cities, these little communities, large and small, start caterwalling and whining and moaning, they didn't say we're going to cut essential services.
The fire department police, we may have to cut some school programs.
No, no, no, Safe.
You can't do it.
They never cut the worthless stuff like funding an art exhibit at the zoo.
Who gives a ratch round about an art exhibit at the zoo?
You know, or funding some loco weed artist coming into town to show his wears.
It's silly stuff.
There's so much redundancy and waste in local state governments.
We're not out of money in that regard.
The degree to which we're being taxed, but I don't care who they are, and I don't care what party, when they become city, state, federal, government officials, they can't do with a dime less ever.
They can't cut.
They can't reorganize.
They can't restructure.
All they can do is find ways to get more of our money.
The fact is, if we could keep more of our money, we could better afford our homes or rent, our cars, college tuition.
You get to the point where half of what you earn is taken from you.
Half of it.
Then people forget the impact of this because they never see half of it.
They see their net and they think that's what they're being paid.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, let me be blunt here.
The first bailout bill created this run on the Treasury.
When we authorized the $700 million and when Congress gave the Treasury Secretary the sole authority, it's in the legislation to ensure the economic welfare of the American people.
That opened the door for anybody else to start asking for money.
I have alluded to this over the course of the program today.
University of Missouri just saw the story.
Well, I've got it somewhere here in the stack.
They have written the Lord Mothiah, Barack Obama, asking for $377 million from the bailout money, or $400 million, because they need that money to teach their students the value of hard work and commerce.
Because they need to teach their students and they won't be able to teach their students if they don't get the money.
Why?
Well, because they won't be able to build that annex or this medical center or complete this project's already underway.
And for some reason, that story just sent me over the edge.
My reaction to it was, if you don't have it, don't build it.
If you don't have it, go earn it.
And I started thinking, how much talent does it take to run around with your handout and guilt people into donating to some supposed highbrow cause?
If you don't have it, don't build it.
Well, but we've got to compete with other universities.
Now, it's called the real world.
If you don't have it, you don't have it.
And the real world is not structured so that if you don't have it, you go ask somebody to give it to you.
You might ask somebody to loan it to you, or you might go ask some series of alums to step up once again and do, but to go out and just and ask for it, something a person individually wouldn't do.
How many of us would go down the street and ask somebody to give us money, other than the professional homeless crowd and so forth, the former squeegee guys, but we wouldn't do it.
But also we run institutions and companies and somehow we think we can go out and start asking people for money.
If you don't have it, don't buy it.
If you don't have it, don't spend it.
If you don't have it, it's too bad.
We don't get everything we want.
Every little student ought not have everything a precious little student wants.
And then there was the football team that asked for $25 million.
Football teams are worth anywhere from $800 million to $1.2 billion.
And they want, and the run on the Treasury was started.
All of this was started with this one $700 billion bailout.
This is my point.
It was all started with this notion that we could not wait 24 hours or our country was finished.
And the thing that I really want to warn you about here, this has opened the door to Obama using the economy as an excuse to advance his agenda.
We have to save the U.S. economy.
We have to do it with a trillion-dollar stimulus package.
Remember when the first $600 stimulus package passed out?
Michelle Obama, I am told, said $600 million would, because that's back in campaign, you know, oppose Bush or whatever Bush does.
And Michelle Obama was $600 million.
Why didn't we even buy a decent pair of earrings?
It didn't get reported much because it was the same day that the Reverend Jackson said that he wanted to deball Barack Obama.
So obviously that story got more coverage than the $600 wouldn't buy a decent pair of earrings.
So now everything's on the table.
Everything to save America, to save the economy.
Everybody from auto workers to college presidents now believe they have a right to public money.
Do you know the United Auto Workers owns a huge golf course?
Yeah, I've got it here in the stack.
The UAW owns a huge and really, really nice golf course that naturally loses money.
Why couldn't they sell it instead of asking for a bailout?
Everybody now believes they have a right to free health care, correct?
They have a right to it.
Everybody believes they have a right to some of the income of everybody else.
They have been told that businesses are bad, mean, evil, cruel.
And so now they're viewed as bad, mean, evil, and cruel.
Businesses are populated by thieves.
The thieves are in Washington.
They'd also been told profit's bad now.
Profit is bad.
Profit's evil.
They've been told that all successful people are crooks.
So every time a real crook is found, he's said to represent the evil of profit.
I have not lost my place on Caroline Kennedy.
The Lord Barack Obama, the Messiah, most merciful, held his press conference today to announce Salazar as the Interior Secretary and Vilsack as the Agriculture Secretary.
When it was over, when the speechifying was over, Obama turned it over to the press.
And man, it's just so tough out there for the press.
We had a question here from CBS News correspondent Cynthia Bowers.
And the question basically is: is it hard for you not to tell us about Blago?
Is it really hard?
Are you frustrated not to be able to tell us the truth about Blago?
Listen to this.
You ran on a platform of transparency.
How difficult is all this having to wait to release your inquiry business when the American people expect transparency?
Well, it's a little bit frustrating.
You believe this?
There's been a lot of speculation in the press that I would love to correct immediately.
Oh, we'll do it.
We are abiding by the request of the U.S. Attorney's Office, but it's not going to be that long.
By next week, you guys will have the answers to all your questions.
So the press wants to know how hard it is for the Messiah not to be able to tell them everything they want to know.
And he's the Messiah, so it's very frustrating for me.
But be patient next week, guys, and you'll know.
Can you imagine Bush getting a question like this?
Mr. President, how hard is it for you to have to tell us about the intelligence leading to weapons of mass destruction?
I know it's got to be difficult for you.
We feel so bad for you.
How hard is it for you, Messiah, not to be able to tell us?
And here's one of the reasons why it isn't hard.
This is from the Chicago Fun-Times.
President-select Barack Obama's incoming chief of staff, Rah Emmanuel, who is everywhere in this, was pushing for Obama's successor.
Just days after the November 4th election, sources told the Chicago Sun-Times, Rahm privately urged Blago and his administration to appoint Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett.
And the Sun-Times learned today he also pressed it to be done by a certain deadline.
Now we know that there was no pay-per-play.
They got mad when they were told it was going to cost them money, but they're lying about not talking to it.
Look at this.
A top securities and exchange commission compliance official who worked for the SEC when it found no problems at Bernie Madoff's firm in 2005, later began to date and married Madoff's niece.
What's her name?
Shanna.
Shanna Madoff.
So this guy, Eric Swanson, he said, I had nothing to do when we looked into Madoff's business.
I had nothing to do.
I was a compliance officer, yeah, but I had nothing to do with looking into this.
A spokesman for Eric Swanson, who's since left the SEC, said Swanson did not participate in any inquiry of Bernard Madoff's securities.
Apparently nobody did or its affiliates while involved in a relationship with Shanna Madoff.
And apparently Bernie Madoff bragged of a close relationship of the SEC.
Yeah, my niece even married one.
The United States of America is bankrupt.
Federal obligations now exceed the collective net worth of all Americans, according to the New York-based Peter G. Peterson Foundation.
I hope the Peter G. Peterson Foundation is not invested with Bernie Madoff.
You know, I actually see some liberal blogs hoping that I had invested everything I have with Madoff.
I kid you not.
Hope Limbaugh was invested with Madoff.
I wasn't.
Given more recent developments, it's clear that America now owes more than its citizens are worth, said Foundation President David Walker, the former Comptroller General of the United States, who's been trying to warn Americans of the coming financial tsunami for years, to no avail.
Now, in all fairness, Pete Peterson, he was commerce or something for Nixon for a period of time.
And Pete, I've met Pete a couple times.
He's in a New York elite dinner party circuit and so forth.
And he has been one of these big desit hawks.
He's one of the guys I tell you about, I go to dinners.
What are you people right?
What do you love guns for?
But he has participated with these guys.
Remember Warren Rudman, they had their clock somewhere on Times Square showing when it was all going to blow up.
Not to be confused with the Bureau of Atomic Scientists, so we're now five minutes to midnight.
And we've been five minutes to midnight my whole life, terms of nuclear destruction.
All right, to the phones.
Debbie in Lancaster, New York.
Great to have you with us at the EIB Network.
Hello.
Hello, Rush.
Merry Christmas.
Same to you.
Well, you were talking about Governor Patterson.
I'm telling you, I am so steamed.
Not only is he taxed, he's taking away our STAR program, he's taxing everything and anything.
He's increasing welfare benefits by 30%, which I know a lot of legitimate needs are out there, but he's restricting.
Can I give you the truth on this, Debbie?
Yes, please do.
All right.
You know, my motto ought to be, he says things that are true that are unspeakable.
I mean, that's why Colin Powell's really mad at me is because I said he endorsed Obama because of race.
Not supposed to say that.
Same thing here with David Patterson.
You know why he can't reduce welfare?
Why?
Well, because our doors are open and we're welcoming everybody who won't work for it.
Riots.
Protests.
Yeah.
This New York City, I guess you could add the state to it, is its own self-contained welfare state above and beyond and apart from the federal welfare state.
And as Tom Wolf wrote in Bonfire of the Vanities, at some point, the people on welfare are going to figure out how to cross the street and get to the parts of Manhattan where David Patterson and his buddies Bernie Matt Office of where they live.
And he's got to keep these people on their side of the street.
New York has created these people.
He has created this dependent class.
New York has done this.
And this is called keeping the peace.
What's going to happen?
This stuff is pure common sense, my friends.
The people being asked and not asked, the people being told they have to pay the freight, they don't have it anymore either.
Yeah, we are.
The middle class, the working class in New York City, all five boroughs, is on its way to becoming a part of the dependent class.
I'm not in this city.
They should annex the city from the state.
I'm upstate.
And we say, New York State, Bohica, bend over.
Here it comes again.
It is so ridiculous here, Rush.
Well, let me tell you something.
Elections have consequences.
The people you elect, not you specifically, I know, but the people of this state keep electing these thieves.
Yeah.
They keep electing liberal Democrats.
They keep electing people who will do nothing but tax, steal, and spend.
88, 88 new fees and taxes.
Dover Governor Patterson, $121 billion slash and burn budget.
He called the budget the greatest economic and fiscal challenge of our lifetimes.
But he said the pain must be shared to deal with the fallout from the Wall Street collapse.
The budget will cost the city of New York, excuse me, an estimated $650 million in state aid.
But it's the $4 billion in new fees and taxes that might aggravate everyday New Yorkers.
I don't see them upset about it now, so why should this upset them?
I mean, if you ask me, the average New Yorker should have gotten so ticked off about this years ago, but the average New Yorker didn't.
They just keep electing these people, and this is what they get.
And they seem very comfortable bent forward grabbing their ankles.
You see it on the Upper West Side constantly.
Down in the village, Soho, Chelsea, taking a drive down.
You see, these people are constantly been over grabbing their ankles, just waiting for the next time.
I know some places are doing it for fun, but I mean, to them, it's a civic responsibility.
This is how we all band together here and share the misery.
It's going to be an iPod tax that charges state and local sales tax for digitally delivered entertainment services.
Now, you want to try to imagine the mechanics of this.
And do you know what happens in the music business when you start taxing or even charging for downloads?
People have found a way around it each and every time.
That's why the music industry is in a tizzy here trying to figure out how to get paid for what it does.
Only idiots go to the store and buy CDs now.
Do you buy CDs in the store anymore, Stirdley?
Do we?
Just download them.
Exactly right.
Are there still CD stores out there?
There are.
And there are still people who go buy CDs.
Well, it just shows.
There's some, yeah, I know, out of print.
Yeah, but I'm talking about current.
Of course, if you want to go get, you know, the CD by George Guber Jones, you know, if you like white lightning, I doubt you're going to be able to.
You can probably download that.
You can download that from iTunes or whatever.
Think of the mechanics of this.
Who's going to collect this tax?
You know, damn well, nobody in the city of New York knows how to do it.
They're going to decide, what, iTunes going to have to do it?
Apple is going to have to do it?
Ha.
Apple.
Anyway, the consumer is going to figure out how to get their music without paying this tax.
And this tax isn't going to raise as much money as old Patterson thinks it's going to raise.
None of these taxes are going to raise money.
These taxes are going to kill money.
The soda cans, soda pop with sugar in it.
That's easy.
Don't buy it.
And let's see how happy the state is that you're getting healthy when they don't get the tax revenue.
All of a sudden, they're going to start taxing sugar-free beverages.
You wait and see.
When you start giving up real Coke and real Pepsi and real 7-up, start buying the diet versions.
Old Patterson and his bean counter is going to figure out: wait a minute, society is getting healthier.
Still a bunch of fat people out there, but they'll get fixed in the meantime.
But our tax revenues are down.
How can this be?
Because you nimrods, people are trying to take action to avoid increased cost of living that you impose.
So then they'll raise taxes on these things that you are buying.
Then they're going to start taxing caffeine.
They've already started taxing trans fat, but this is just absurd.
This does not work.
The 50-cent tax on cigars, their current tax equal to 37% of the wholesale price, or 34 cents a cigar.
State sales tax at movie theaters, sporting events, taxis, buses, limousines, and cable and satellite TV and radio.
While the Medicaid program would grow 3.8%, Patterson wants $3.5 billion in health care cuts that hospital and nursing homes have said will lead to closures.
A flurry of advocates and economists on Monday criticized Patterson for mostly burdening the poor and the middle class while ignoring calls to increase the income tax for the rich.
I don't know what's left to tax the rich.
They're already, folks, these are liberals.
This is what we've been trying to warn people for all of these years.
The blueprint is out there for how to do this the right way.
Let me grab a quick, quick another phone call.
This is Elkview, West Virginia.
This is Aaron.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Oh, rush.
Merry Christmas.
Thanks for taking my call.
Same to you.
So excited to talk to you.
I wanted to let you know that Germany already has in place a way to tax radio and television.
We lived there for a few years, and every year we would get a form in the mail that said, tell me how many radios you have, tell me how many TVs you have, and this is the tax rate you need to pay on it.
You are kidding.
No, no.
Did they ever challenge your information demand to come into your home or see your garage?
Well, fortunately, because we were there with the military, we could send them a note saying we're here with the Americans.
You can't tax us because we're American.
But I don't know how they enforced it, but I do know that all of our friends got them, all of our German friends, and they said, yeah, this is normal.
There was no, they were not upset about it.
They paid the tax every year.
The first year I got it, I just went to my German friends and said, are you crazy?
You pay this?
They said, yes.
Oh, yes.
Well, see, this is where we're headed.
That kind of Western European socialism.
Yes, exactly.
It's scary to see.
I kind of expect it in New York.
I expect it in California.
But it's scary to see that people are starting to accept things like that.
Oh, yes, well, we need the money, so let's tax whatever we have.
Well, see, they don't have any.
I know.
The government doesn't have any money.
After they take our tax revenue, they are printing some more and they're borrowing some more.
They don't have the money.
Why?
And once people with no money start bailing out others with no money, then a whole bunch of others with no money are going to go to the same source for more money, and there's no money.
So the original $700 billion bailout is what started all of these runs, all of these requests for bailouts.
That, too, was predicted.
On Monday, ladies and gentlemen, we introduced you to the new syndrome because we have to invent our traumas in our country these days.
That was layoff survivor syndrome.
This was the guilt that you feel when your friends and colleagues are laid off, but you are not.
People are feeling so bad that they are not being fired and laid off that some of them wish they were.
However, they're not quitting.
Today we have survival panic to report to you.
This is from Reuters.
A paralegal recently laid off wanted to get back at the establishment that he felt was to blame for his lost job.
So when he craved an expensive new tie, he went out and he stole one.
The story relayed by psychiatrist Timothy Fong at UCLA is an example of the rash behaviors exhibited by more Americans as a recession undermines a lifestyle built on spending.
In the coming months, mental health experts expect a rise in theft, depression, drug use, anxiety, and even violence as consumers confront a harsh new reality and must live within diminished means.
Wait a minute here.
Did some people not get the memo that Obama won?
What the hell is this?
Harsh new reality and must live within diminished means?
That's not what we, that's not what we voted for.
That's not what we bargained for.
So survival panic.
People start seeing their economic situation change.
It stimulates a sort of survival panic, said Gaetano Vaccaro, deputy clinical director, Moon View Sanctuary, which treats patients for emotional and behavioral disorders.
You've got to be kidding me.
Moon View Sanctuary?
Who's Moon?
Moon View Sanctuary, where they have people that are disturbed?
When we are in survival panic, we are prone to really extreme behaviors.
So we go from layoff survivor syndrome to survival panic.
They're just writing a ticket forever.
Go steal, get drunk, get addicted.
You have an excuse.
And the excuse was Obama's elected because this was supposed to get fixed and it's not going to get fixed.
John in Argyle, Texas.
Great to have you on the EIB network, sir.
Hello.
Hello, Rush.
I need to take you to task on two things you've said within the last couple weeks, which have really just sent me over the edge.
A few other things you've said in the past.
All right.
One has got to do with last week you mentioned that you would never have to pay for someone that wasn't producing something or that wasn't working.
And I have to question whether or not you have now lumped retirees into that group.
Do you consider those people that are no longer producing, even though the company, when it went into retirement, the company decided instead of giving them a lump sum payout, we're going to give them an annuity?
Well, they're not working for the company, but they've met that requirement.
Are they okay?
Well, I guess up to a certain point, but now many of these people are being paid more in retirements than they ever earned while they worked.
Okay, Rush, I got to ask you this then.
Do you have the same heartburn after somebody spends 20 years in the military?
No.
Then what's the difference?
I don't have heartburn.
I'm talking about pure mathematics here.
I'm talking about, you can talk about annuities all you want.
When General Motors or any company has to take from their profits and pay people who are not working anymore, at some point, the inability to do so is going to occur.
Pure and simple.
I don't pay anybody who used to work for the EIB network, but no longer does.
They're on their own.
Okay, folks, one exciting hour to go from the EIB building in Midtown Manhattan.
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