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Jan. 27, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:34
January 27, 2009, Tuesday, Hour #2
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Greetings to you, music lovers, thrill seekers, conversationalists all across the fruited plain.
Great to have you with us.
My name is Rush Limbaugh.
I am the man.
President Barack Obama has suggested that you not listen to.
I am the person.
Barack Obama has impugned as saying my way is not how things get done.
And from his perspective, uh he's exactly right.
Telephone number 800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program, the email address L Rushbow at EIBNet.com.
Place soundbite number 23, and this is Charles Gasparino responding to a New York Times uh story or reporter on CNBC this morning about Merrill Lynch and their bathroom redecoration.
Anybody defends that office the two people who I love that defended that office, or one person I love is Rush Limbaugh, and he defended it on purely like it was supply-side economics.
But that's not entirely true.
Yeah, I gave a supply-side economics uh lesson there.
But also, folks, the the foundation for my philosophical reaction to the Merrill Lynch bathroom is freedom.
Freedom, this was not bailout money that they used.
Do you understand the degree to which freedom is under assault?
When the federal government is usurping trillions of dollars from the private sector and absorbing it themselves, along with those trillions goes some freedom.
You know, I maybe, and I I admire Charles Gasparino's uh work as well.
But I hope he doesn't mean that he thinks that all corporations have to submit their proposed expenses to Obama and to Car Eleven and whoever else before they actually spend the money.
But that's where we're headed.
And that's where we had a call from a citizen out in Aspeny.
I want to know where they're going to spend the money.
Look at what's happening here.
The engine of freedom is being absorbed by the group of people who limit freedom by definition.
That's the government.
You know, for the last few days in this country, and I've tried to make these teachable moments, for the last few days, we in this country have spent more time discussing the refurbishing of an office in Manhattan and the purchase of a private jet than we as a nation have discussed the responsibility of Barney Frank,
who I just saw on television, opposing tax cuts, Chris Dodd, Franklin Reigns, Jim Johnson, Jamie Garellick in driving this nation into a housing and financial crisis.
The people who have gotten us where we are are being ignored, they're being given a free ride, they're being made members of the new administration, including some who are tax cheats, have nanny problems and so forth, and nobody's focusing on that.
We're focused on a corporate jet, we're focused on bathroom refurberations and so forth.
You ought to be more outraged by what's happening to your economy and your country than a corporate jet and a bathroom redecoration.
And look at this, the Financial Times.
Thain called to testify on Merrill bonuses.
Okay, this guy has resigned, and they're gonna bring him up here and they're gonna flog this guy on paying bonuses.
He might have done it with TARP money.
I don't know.
If he did, he deserves what he gets.
This is what happens, folks.
This is a teachable moment when the federal government pays you to run your business, they run it.
And if you do things to embarrass them, they're gonna call you up and they're gonna destroy you.
This guy's name may as well be Robert Bork today.
His name may as well be Clarence Thomas.
This is what the Obama administration is about.
This is what the left has been about in this country for as long as I've been watching him, and that is destroying people who stand in their way of amassing federal power that is not theirs.
And nobody cares.
Nobody's standing up to oppose it.
This is why Obama mentioned my name to divert everybody from what he's doing.
All these people saying, uh, Rush Obama's scared.
He's not scared of me.
He's the president of the United States.
He's not scared of me at all.
What he does know is I'm probably a louder voice of opposition than he's got anywhere else.
But to say he's scared with one signature, he could spell the end of this radio show and others as you've come to know it.
It may happen.
Who knows down the line.
Now I want to take a brief departure.
I just saw something I was telling your staff about it.
This to me, I just adored.
It is Media Day at the Super Bowl.
The Arizona Cardinals trooped in there this morning.
It's at Raymond James Stadium, and the Steelers are there now.
Steelers showed up about noon.
And of course, they put their star players in their own little booths out on the field, and then other players and coaches are up in the stands, and the media can go talk to whoever they want to talk to.
The NFL network's televising this.
So during the last commercial break of the last hour I'm watching, when they finally got to Ben Rothlisberger, the quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
And among the assembled horde of reporters is a young kid.
He looks to be, I don't know how to judge kids' ages, but I guess he's 10 or 12.
He may be a teenager.
And he looks like it was he looks like any character that you might see on a Fox Sunday night cartoon series, the family guy or King of the Hill or what have you.
This is just an average American who obviously won a contest to get in there.
He's got his little glasses on, he's got his notebook and his tape recorder, he's asking Rothlisberger questions, and I swear.
This kid was asking Rothlisberger better questions, more questions I'm interested in the answers to more than any of the reporters that I saw.
I mean, the reporters are asking things like, so Ben, you said that you're uh the first Super Bowl back in Detroit, you were just nervous the whole game.
Do you expect um expect to be nervous?
And he's already answered that, asked and answered last week, all weekend long, and it's typical football question.
This kid says, Mr. Rothlisberger, I noticed that you wear all the plays every game on your left wrist.
How many plays do you have?
He said, Oh, we have about 200 offensive plays that we have to remember, and they're all on here.
He said, Well, do you do you do you have most of them memorized?
Well, I pretty much know them, but this this is their is is is a backup.
Then the kid said, Well, who who is the most important role model in your life?
And Rothlisberger said, in football or in life?
The kid said, No, in football.
And Rothlisberger said, My dad.
Then the kid asked him, Do you ever play Madden video game?
Rothlisberger said, Well, I did once in college, I don't play it much.
And the kid says, Well, I do, and Rothesburger says, Well, what's your favorite team?
Which team you like out there?
And the little kid says, Patriots.
And Rothlisberger says, Well, that's a good team.
That's a good team.
And this kid's just having a time of his life.
He's uh he's getting some information from Rothlisberger that would not be gotten by some of these other reporters, and it was just, it was just great.
It was just, it was a nice contrast to uh to watch.
Folks, look, look at things.
Try to look at it this way, if you will.
The Citibank corporate jet.
And the Merrill Lynch bathroom reverberation means nothing to us.
It means not one substantive thing to you.
Whether they have a jet or not, at Starbucks at Merrill Lynch, who matters nothing.
It doesn't, it won't make one bit of difference in your life.
Same thing if some of these guys want to remodel their offices for 1.2 million dollars.
But the loss of trillions in the stock market.
Your plummeting 401ks, your savings account, your pension plans, the loss of value in the housing market.
This is what you ought to be angry about.
This affects you.
Thank you.
Big time.
This affects you in matters of great substance.
This is your savings.
This is your life's work.
This is, for some of you, your job.
What ought to concern you is not the jets and not the bathrooms.
What ought to concern you is the hack politicians, telling you and everyone else that they are better equipped to run this economy than the people who have been.
This is a diabolical, intricately woven web of deceit that is being executed and woven here.
And you have been sucked right into it.
If you're if you're falling prey to all this class envy stuff, it's no different than when you think the rich ought to have their taxes raised.
Doesn't matter a hill of beans.
In fact, it can mean something bad for you.
Because then they are prone to hire fewer people and to pay fewer wages and raises smaller.
After debacle after debacle after debacle, the question still arises, how can people have such faith in government to fix things?
And the answer, frustratingly, is there just too many people now to whom big government means big benefits.
Means big results means the government cares.
It's a sad place we've gotten to, and this bunch, this I Obama is moving faster than I ever thought.
Lickety split.
This guy with his, we haven't talked about it yet in his speech.
He ripped America again in his speech.
Well, his TV interview with Al Arabiya, his first formal interview as president is with Al Arabiyyah.
Last night, he says too often the United States has dictated, I'm sending George Mitchell my envoy over to listen to you.
He said, Problem in Israel is that the Israelis have occupied too many PLO settlements.
That that that's not the problem.
That hasn't that hasn't happened in years.
The problem is the Palestinian and the Hamas the Gazuka rockets being launched into Israel.
Well, too often the United States, we are not your enemy.
He says, Will he make that speech to me?
Would Obama make a speech on, say, a conservative network and say, I am not your enemy?
Or would he say you are my enemy?
Let's talk about casualties for just a second.
Casualties are mounting.
This matters.
This isn't a jet.
This isn't a redecorated bathroom.
Casualties are mounting across the United States.
Home Depot announced that they are killing off 7,000.
Sprint, killing off 8,000.
Pfizer, killing off 8,000 more.
Other companies, including Caterpillar, brought the total to 40,000 jobs killed in just one day.
Now sadly, the number of casualties is expected to rise with no end in sight.
Economists are warning that we're just witnessing the tip of the iceberg here.
By the end of this year, 10% of America's workforce could be unemployed.
But that doesn't matter, does it?
Because we're not going to let City have their jet and we're going to make sure we get the money back for the redecorated bathroom.
Right.
10% of America's workforce could be unemployed even if President Obama's trillion-dollar spending program is enacted.
We are told there will be a net loss of at least 2 million jobs more by the end of the year.
and Even if, folks, he gets all of his trillion dollars.
Even with this dire forecast, a rapidly deteriorating labor market, our new president and his Democrat Congress are planning to kill even more jobs by demanding that automakers build green cars that nobody wants.
By adopting draconian fuel standards to appease radical environmentalists.
At the local level, liberal state governments from California to New York to New Jersey are introducing new taxes as they refuse to rein in their budgets.
I wonder if the drive-by media will keep a running monthly tally of the Obama casualties.
In the same manner they did war casualties under George W. Bush.
Or if protesters will plant crosses on mock graves for every job killed under the Obama administration.
Will we have people protesting?
The loss of American treasure.
The loss of American jobs.
Will we have people camping out across the street from Obama's house in Chicago as they camped across the street from Bush's place in Crawford?
Forty thousand jobs killed in one day, the Obama administration tells us we're going to lose two million more this year, even if he gets what he wants.
Now for those of you who think this is an unfair question, perhaps an unfair analogy.
Let me remind you, we are talking about lives here.
We are not talking about jets.
We are not talking about bathroom refurbishing.
We are talking about what was once entrepreneurial freedom that's being usurped.
We are trying to take these incidents as teachable moments to illustrate that what's happening here is nothing more than a giant usurpation of trillions of dollars of private sector wealth transferred to the government and then parceled out by that government on the basis of who they think ought to have it.
They will pick winners and losers.
We're talking about 40,000 people's lives in one day.
Their identities, their dreams, their hopes, and their jobs.
Casualties.
And there is a war going on.
These are casualties in war, and I'm going to tell you what the war is.
This is the Obama war on prosperity.
40,000 jobs dead in one day.
You know this?
This Pelosi business of funding abortion being part of the stimulus, contraception being part of the stimulus, fewer people means economic growth.
This thing went away way too fast.
Nobody fought for this other than Bob Wexler, it uh congressman from Florida who lives in Maryland.
It looks like that this might have been a House Democrat leadership plan.
I'm not so sure that Obama ever bought into this because Obama canceled it with the slightest bit of attention.
Now, folks, this is also instructive.
What if there were this kind of attention paid to every item in this stimulus bill?
All it took was one day of people realizing that Nancy Pelosi actually said that killing babies in the womb was economic stimulus.
And once it was framed that way because she allowed it to happen Sunday on her TV appearance, the Obama administration had no choice but then to broom it.
Okay, so now we've got four billion dollars of stimulus for acorn, community organizing groups for neighborhood stabilization programs, voter fraud organizations,
we are four billion dollars to pay for Obama's ground machine, the get out the vote bunch, the fraudulent voter registration, but what else you've seen the list of items that are in this that have nothing to do with economic stimulus that it's porculus?
What if every item in this got the same scrutiny that Pelosi's idiocy got?
Where would we we'd be looking at something far different?
Because you see, when the media gets close to doing their job, the American people win.
It just doesn't happen very much.
Bernie Goldberg, new book out, Who refers to it as a slobbering love affair between the media and Obama?
$400 million for NASA climate change research in a stimulus bill.
$650 million for digital TV converter box coupons.
I mean, and that by the way, this is now going to get us up to two trillion, not one.
People are forgetting all the stimuli and bailouts that occurred throughout calendar 2008.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act won a 41 billion dollars to the local school districts, 1.1 billion to Amtrak, 600 million into buying energy efficient cars for the federal government, which will double what they spend on the fleet now.
Rush Limbaugh, don't doubt me, resisting the tug of popular sentiment.
Gotta get to the phones here in just a second.
Obama just left the Capitol.
He just finished his meeting with Republican leaders up there trying to get them to go along with his stimulus package.
Now, I want to explore something in little detail that I brought up yesterday.
Obama does not need a single Republican vote in the House to get his stimulus bill.
He just needs two votes in the Senate to get it.
He does not need Republican vote.
He won, he said.
He can trump them.
He wants a why does he want Republicans on board?
Why does he want Republicans on board with this when he can do it without them?
If this, folks, I'm serious about this.
If it's such a great plan, if this stimulus is such a great plan, then why not take sole authorship of it as the Democrat Party so that when it works, you can then really finish off the Republicans.
In when it works, you can say, and this prosperity was brought to you by Obama and the stimulus package, and not one Republican helped out.
Not one Republican thought it would.
That would be the end of the Republican Party as we know it.
So why doesn't he do it if he's so confident it's gonna work?
Because he's not confident it's gonna work in the way you hope it works.
It's gonna work for what he has in mind, but it ain't gonna work in the ways you hope.
It's gonna work in building and strengthening a Democrat Party for as long as we live.
It's gonna grow the government, it's gonna make the government the sole focus of the United States of America, not individual citizens exercising their daily lives with individual freedom.
But there's also another reason.
And it isn't, it's it's largely about political cover.
And I think, by the way, you probably have seen if you if you were one who reads the internet and websites daily, you've probably seen some of the most personal and visious articles written about me ever from mainstream reporters.
It's vicious.
It borders on I hope he gets cancer and dies.
It borders on why did Tim Russard have to be the one to get the heart attack.
And these are from names that you know.
These are from, you know, journalists, columnists, both local and national.
Now they're really irritated.
I thought I was irrelevant now.
I thought all Republicans were irrelevant.
Now, how why why all this vitriol aimed at me?
This has nothing to do, by the way.
Well, some of it has to do with Obama mentioning my name because it just makes them mad.
Just makes them mad.
They wish that I would just vanish.
So Obama mentions me and it makes them mad.
There's a little professional jealousy thrown in, but in a lot of it is issues.
Let's go back to 1993 for the answer to this.
Why Obama wants Republican votes, why he wants a quote unquote bipartisan bill.
The fear that these people are expressing, I think is rooted in 1993.
Bill Clinton passed, and if you remember this, my memory is long.
Bill Clinton passed his economic pack, the tax increase, the retroactive tax increase on people after he'd worked so hard for a middle class tax cut and couldn't bring it off.
He did that without any Republican support.
Do you remember my friends?
That tax increase went through with I mean, it there was hardly any Republican support on that.
He tried a few other things without Republican support.
While this was going on, here we were.
I was being made an honorary member of the House freshman class in 1994, and there was a distinct conservative message.
And that distinct conservative message, coupled with the fact that not one Republican had compromised his conservatism by agreeing with Clinton's tax increase, allowed for a great contrast to be drawn, and along with a lot of other factors, the Republicans won the House for the first time in 90 in uh in 40 years in 1993 in the elections, in 1994.
That's what they are afraid of.
The reason Obama mentioned my name, the reason Obama is desperate to have Republican support for this is to see to it that what happened in 1993 does not happen here in 2009.
And that is that no conservative alternative supported by the Republican Party is to get traction.
If he can co-opt the Republicans, even co-op McConnell and a number of Republicans in the Senate to go along with him on this, then when this blows up, they're on record with him as being responsible for it blowing up.
It is why it's crucial that they hold out.
Because Obama doesn't need a single Republican vote in the House to get what he wants, and he only needs a couple in the Senate.
And that couple is just to break closure.
It's all he needs.
Two Republicans.
Republicans have got to hold firm on this.
They have got to hold out on this.
Let Obama go alone like Clinton went alone in 1993.
That's what Obama and the Democrats don't want to happen.
They want the Republican Party co-opted under the term bipartisan.
And they want conservative opposition relegated to what people are going to be led to believe is a fringe.
Little band of people out there would barely barely see him.
That's so small and they're so fringe.
So while he's trying to co-opt trillions of dollars of the U.S. economy, he's trying to wipe out the conservative movement in the Republican Party.
The last people to see this are what it is are the Republicans themselves.
They are so cowed by fear of other things, and they're so cowed by language and so forth that they've got big decision to make, and that's why Obama's romancing them, and it's why he's taken to I'm watching the press go, wow, we never saw Bush come up here work with Democrats.
We never saw President's Obama, he really reaching out, he's really new kind of guy.
He's trying to co-opt them.
He's trying to destroy them.
He is trying to make sure that he still wins when this stimulus package bombs.
Larry in Kansas City, Kansas.
As we go back to the phones, glad you waited, sir.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Well, Rock, I just want to say that I'm definitely a part of your 1% club.
Uh, Article 1, Section 8, and the Ninth and Tenth Amendment.
Basically say in plain terms, Congress keep your hands off the private sector and the free markets.
There's nowhere in the Constitution where it says that they have the right for bailouts to take control of the private sector.
I I I applaud what you're doing, and count me in that one percent.
If people want to buy a jet, let them buy a jet.
Well, you know, there have been people questions about the constitutionality of the bailouts on the on the basis that you've you've uh you've mentioned, but somebody's got to bring the case.
Somebody's got to bring the nobody's gonna bring the case that it's uh that it's unconstitutional on on whatever whatever grounds that you decide.
Therefore, you were back to where we always are.
The constant informing and educating of the American people.
And by the way, we're talking about hope and change.
I'm really looking for some hope and change.
And one of my big hopes is that at some point enough Americans finally wake up and say, wait a minute, we're fed up with the way you people are spending money here.
We can hope.
We just had a campaign on it.
And I'm hoping, and I'm hoping for immediate change.
And I'll tell you this.
The president of the United States hopes I fail.
Try that.
America's truth detector.
America's doctor of democracy.
Serving humanity on the EIB network.
Back to the phones to Gross Point, Michigan.
This is Janet.
Janet High, nice to have you with us.
Hello, last man standing.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
You're welcome.
Let us re-educate the American people on Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan.
If Carl Levin were a competent senator, his comments tonight would not have been about a jet.
It would have been about what his president did yesterday to the American car makers.
How our president gave the foreign automakers an unfair advantage.
Our American car companies now have to hold to ridiculous cafe standards that their foreign competition do not.
That after we just gave both GM and Chrysler how much in bailout money?
Well, that's precisely why Carr 11 can do it.
I know.
Yeah, Carl Levin, Jennifer Grantholm, they're really doing a lot for Michigan, aren't they?
Rush, now you have to get your little graph people going.
And you have to put the year that Rush that um Carl Evans got into office and how well Michigan was doing, and chart Michigan's growth against Carl Living Levin's uh time in office, how we had floated.
Wait, wait a second here.
Now the this is a serious question here, Janet.
Yes.
What good would my little glass people doing a chart?
What good would it do if the people living there with their own life experiences don't understand what's happening to them right in their daily lives each and every day.
What good's my chart gonna do?
You are a brilliant man.
You are absolutely correct.
People in America do not understand that the city of Detroit enjoys a 49% adult illiteracy rate.
They can't read the newspaper.
Yeah, but they can all vote Democrat.
Exactly.
Exactly what they all know what the letter D looks like.
Is that really an accurate stat, 49% of real literate?
Yes, it is.
In the city of Detroit.
Twenty-one percent of the kids graduate from that go into kindergarten graduate.
Only twenty-one percent for the last twenty-five years.
And the Detroit Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, no, that I'm confused.
Twenty-one percent don't pass kindergarten?
No, that the twenty-one percent of the children that enter kindergarten in the Detroit public school system have made it out of high school.
Only twenty-one percent have graduated.
For twenty-five years.
Twenty seventy percent of the college educated leave Michigan annually.
Rosh, this is what they want to do to America, what they've done to Michigan.
But Janet, all the tax increases that we're supposed to supposed to solve all these problems.
Yes.
Not that well, nothing's going to help Detroit.
Nothing.
I mean I can't believe these numbers.
These numbers are unfortunate.
Forty nine percent.
Adult illiteracy.
In in the city limits of Detroit.
800,000 residents, a little more than that.
We're talking what's the literacy rate in Gross Point and Gross Point Park?
Oh, well probably ninety-eight point two.
I mean, we have one of the best I mean.
What's what's the literacy rate in Ann Arbor?
There's a university.
Oh, well, probably a hundred and twelve.
What about Lansing?
Lansing has issues, but it's probably So obviously you went to Michigan.
No, no, no.
I'm I'm not from here.
That's why I'm not blind to it.
Oh, oh.
I married a Michigan.
These are still hard numbers.
Forty-nine percent of adults in Detroit cannot read.
Yes, and then go back to the Detroit News before Christmas announcing their financial problems.
And when you've got a city where a couple of hundred thousand people don't cannot read a paper, no wonder.
Uh a o institution like the Detroit News is suffering.
It's not just right.
You know the Detroit News and the Free Press are going to three days a week.
Right.
And that's not funny papers are not enough to save them.
And we don't have selfishness.
Now you still have to read the words in the balloons.
I know.
I mean, this is what they want to do to Michigan.
Rush, I don't know if you know this, but the city of Detroit does not run a Republican, has not run for mayor, has not run a Republican for almost 40 years.
They run two Democrats against each other.
No one has been able to explain me how they pulled that one off.
And you want me to do a chart with glasses.
With graphs and everything.
What has happened?
So, you know, this...
Ha, ha, ha.
This is what I love about your people.
The people living in Detroit have no clue until I do a chart.
No, it's America.
We lost Detroit.
We're fighting for the soul of America, Rush.
Well, where did you move from?
Boston.
Okay, now uh you obviously you're married.
Yes, I'm married.
I married I married a man from here.
Oh, okay.
Uh.
So that's But we have Yes.
I can't I came out here.
I came out here for a job in advertising, actually.
Your husband did or you did?
I did.
Can your husband read?
Yes, he went to Princeton.
Well, now you know, then there's a next you know uh uh look.
I'm sorry, I've got to talk to Mike Fezley, who's the general manager WJR Love Mike.
Mike, I gotta ask this question.
I'm sorry, please don't hold against me.
Is in Princeton and Boston Yes?
I thought I can't ask the question.
Oh, ask it.
I don't I won't be embarrassed.
How did you end up?
How did I end up where?
In Michigan?
In Michigan, yeah.
Oh, I came out for I came out for a job to work in Toronto.
I came out for a job.
And I fell out.
No, your husband went out there.
Oh, he's from here.
I know, so that's why you went back?
No, no, no, no.
I got married here.
I came out single.
Oh, this is worse than I thought.
I know it's terrible.
It's a terrible story.
Actually, folks, let me tell you something.
I want to I want to use this as another teachable moment.
Because Janet, uh I love you.
You you're you're you're you're this is the great opportunity here.
For those of you who don't know, Gross Point is a wealthy suburb of Detroit.
Was it in better shape than our housing values are at 1996 rates.
I'm getting no healthy.
It's still it's it's still an it's a beautiful place to live.
It is.
It's incredible.
All right.
Now, most people think that people like you who live in a really, really nice place like you couldn't care less what's happening to Detroit.
But listen, you do.
You don't live in Detroit, you live in Gross Point.
I know.
But you care deeply about what's happening in Detroit.
I got I got my dog out of a dumpster a year ago today, a black pit bull puppy named the Reverend Sharp tip.
You grabbed a dog out of a out of a dumpster.
In Detroit.
And you named it Reverend Sharpton?
After you.
And it's a pit bull.
You know what I want you to call your vet, say, hey, I need to bring Reverend Sharpton by getting him neutered.
I gotta run, Janet.
Thanks much.
It's great to have you on the program.
Stand by audio sound by number 26.
I'm gonna try to squeeze it in.
I may not get it in here, it's Obama, but I couldn't believe these numbers that she passed out in Detroit on literacies.
I went to a did a quick check.
The Detroit Literacy Coalition.
Now, the uh the functional illiteracy rate in Michigan, according to the mission statement of the Detroit Literary or f it's frequently asked questions from the Detroit Literacy Coalition website.
The functional ill literacy rate in Michigan is 18%.
The functional illiteracy rate in Detroit 47%.
So she was close.
What'd she say?
49?
I've I just found it unbelievable.
Four it's 47% functional illiteracy in Detroit.
Now, I didn't understand her stat on graduations because she got me confused on kindergarten there.
But the Detroit Literacy Coalition says that the high school graduation rate in Detroit, no accurate data reported, but it hovers about 65 to 70%.
Now she used a figure of 21% at kindergarten and so forth, but I mean some of those people probably leave town before they get to high school.
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