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Feb. 5, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:42
February 5, 2009, Thursday, Hour #3
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A lot of you don't know many liberals.
Our country has gotten to be so divided, literally by geography.
You take a look at the red and blue maps that they do, the presidential voting where they break it down by county and they have these giant maps.
The red areas are like overwhelmingly Republican, and the blue areas are overwhelmingly democratic.
There are people who live in this country who might not bump into three liberals in a year.
Well, I live in the liberal part of a liberal city and a liberal state, so I deal with them all the time.
And you start to learn a few things.
Liberals generally fall into one of two groups.
They're either total hypocrites who stand for nothing, or they're nuts.
There might be a third group of liberal, but I've not met one.
They're either completely hypocritical, just totally phony on all the stuff that they sanctimoniously carry on about, or they're nuts.
Now you may wonder why there isn't a third category, and so far as I can tell, it's because in order to actually believe in the things that they talk about, you have to be psychotic.
I holding today's New York Times, which is just Indus.
I hope they don't go under.
I really hope the New York Times doesn't go under.
In fact, I hope they apply for bailout money and they get it, because I want to see how the New York Times I want to see how old Salzberger reacts when they start trying to limit his executive pay.
Watch the tortured editorials as they explain why it's okay to limit executive pay for everyone except the New York Times.
The New York Times is indispensable.
If the New York Times did not exist, it's like the diet daily diary of the American left.
The New York Times wasn't here, we would have no idea how these people actually think because they're forced to explain them.
Anyway, I'm holding up the home section of today's New York Times.
This is how seriously I take my guest hosting responsibilities.
I read literally everything.
The home section of today's New York Times.
The headline is Trashing the Fridge.
This story is about some people who are so concerned that we are destroying the planet, that they are literally doing everything in their power to reduce their carbon footprint.
Who was it that uh said we should limit our toilet paper usage to one square?
Was that Cheryl Crow as Cheryl Crow?
Now, of course, she didn't actually do that.
My guess is that Cheryl Crow is the kind of person who would take the entire role just because she's Cheryl Crow.
But there are some people who take this stuff seriously and literally do think that man is destroying the planet, and they think that they can save the world by reducing their own carbon footprint.
So they die they have thrown away their refrigerators.
They don't own refrigerators anymore.
For the last two years, Rachel Muston, a 32-year-old information technology worker for the Canadian government in Ottawa, has been taking steps to reduce her carbon footprint, composting line drying clothes, installing an efficient furnace in her three-story house downtown.
About a year ago, though, she decided to go big in her effort to be more environmentally responsible.
After mulling the idea over for several weeks, she and her husband Scott Young did something many would find unthinkable.
They unplugged their refrigerator for good.
It's been a while, and we're pretty happy.
We're surprised at how easy it's been.
She then talks about the need to go to the market every day and prepare the food while it's fresh.
There are inconveniences.
The husband who's just got to be an incredibly henpeck guy.
He doesn't get to have cold beer anymore, but they've thrown away their refrigerator to reduce their carbon usage.
So that's nuts, but they're sincere.
She actually does think one person can make a difference.
She actually does think we're destroying the planet through our use of carbon.
She does think that carbon emissions are the reason that global warming is occurring, and she's doing her part.
She's not using the refrigerator anymore.
So I give these people I would not know these people existed were it not for the New York Times, chronicling without any irony, these people who have thrown away their refrigerators.
So there are sincere liberals out there.
They're nuts.
They can't eat frozen foods.
I don't know what happens to their milk after two days, but they're trying to reduce their carbon footprint.
The rest of them, they're phonies.
Look at this tax story.
By the way, you you literally can't make it up.
There's another one just today, Hilda Solis, who is the designee for Secretary of Labor, in fact, I think she's been confirmed.
Has she been confirmed?
We don't know.
Nobody's paying attention to who the Secretary of Labor is.
Hilda Solis's husband just today paid a sixty, four hundred dollar tax lead.
I mean, what?
Can he how many members of Obama's cabinet are just tax cheats?
Then you add in Richardson who was had to be rejected because he's under federal investigation.
We allow Geithner to get through because we desperately need a Secretary of the Treasury, so you have a Treasury secretary in charge of collecting taxes, who for years systematically refused to pay his own taxes, and then there's the whole Dashel story.
Tom Dashel, who just didn't declare as income.
The fact that he was getting the use of a car in a car service for several years.
The thing that's hypocritical about this is they have the audacity to get up so sanctimoniously in criticizing those of us who are fiscal conservatives who believe that cutting taxes helps the economy.
They call us greedy.
Now, those of us who are supply siders sincerely believe, whether we're right or we're wrong, and we're right, whether we are right or we are wrong, we believe lowering the tax burden of individual Americans and American corporations puts more money to work in the economy.
It leads to higher standards of living for everyone.
We happen to think that money working through the private sector is more efficient at accomplishing good than giving it all to government and having it go into the government system.
It's a belief that we have, and it's sincere.
So we're mocked and told we're not being patriotic because we support tax cuts.
You're greedy.
You want tax cuts for the rich.
You rich Republicans, you want to keep everything you have.
Joe Biden even went so far.
Last year during the vice presidential campaign is saying that it is patriotic to pay your taxes, implying that those who think that they shouldn't have to pay the taxes they're paying are somehow being less than patriotic.
Interesting that liberals get to question the patriotism of those of us on the right, but whenever any of us on the right question of liberals, it's off limits.
Nonetheless, he said that it was patriotic to pay your taxes, and it's greedy to support changes in public policy that would lower the level at which we are taxed.
Yet we're taking a look at these democrats, one after the other after the other after the other.
They don't pay their taxes.
Taxes they're required to pay by law.
So the same crowd that is telling us that we can't lower taxes is filled with people who aren't willing to pay taxes that by law they're required to pay.
The Dashell story was breathtaking.
Here's a guy that spent most of his life in government, decides to cash in when his senatorial service is over.
There's nothing wrong with that.
I've got no problem with somebody cashing in.
So it makes America great.
You cash in, you try to make something, you try to make some money, so Dashell goes and does it.
But then, the moment that he gets there, he gets he finds out the same thing that anybody else finds out when they start making big income.
The government takes a lot of it.
So Tom Dashell, Mr. Ray's taxes, good committed liberal.
Wow.
I'm making all this money, but I don't I've got to give this much to the government.
So he starts cheating.
Well, I'm not going to declare the car service money.
Nobody will ever catch it, will they?
Now I know a little bit about this.
If you own racehorses like I do, your tax return is unbelievably complicated.
My CPA sends me a questionnaire at the beginning of tax season in which he asks me everything that goes on in my life.
The guy that prepared Tom Daschell's tax statement didn't want to go to prison.
He is going to ask questions about things that Dashell received in kind.
Daschell didn't tell him about the car service.
He didn't tell him about it because he knew that it was taxable income.
So here you've got a guy, the leader of the Democratic Party in the Senate for many years, just ducking his taxes.
I don't want to revisit the stories of all of them, Geitner and the rest.
My point is this.
These people are absolute phonies when it comes to public tax policy.
They want to suggest that those of us who believe that lower tax rates are good for the country are greedy.
Yet in their own lives, they do everything they can to avoid paying taxes that they're legally required to pay.
And look at the fallout from this.
They just all just walk away.
Geitner doesn't even walk away.
He's confirmed as Secretary of the Treasury.
Dashell leaves, and it's being treated as some sort of national tragedy that we are losing the incredible service of Tom Dashell.
You should read today's story in the New York Times about this.
When Tom Daschell said he was quitting his lucrative consulting job to become President Obama's health secretary, an old Republican rival teased him about giving up the good life.
Dashel was eager for Washington's financial rewards.
He had benefited from his wife's pay as an aviation lobbyist.
They shared a two million dollar home in a fancy Washington neighborhood, but with three grandchildren from a previous marriage, he aspired to some wealth to leave to his kids and grandkids.
Those competing ambitions collided this week as Mr. Dashell withdrew from consideration for the Health Secretary's job amid an uproar over his failure to pay $128,000 in taxes.
He got caught in this backlash against high level compensation, said former Senator Bob Carey.
I think he drew a pretty clear line about what he wanted to do to earn a living.
He could have made a lot more money if he had registered as a lobbyist, but he just didn't want to do it.
Others said Mr. Dashel's situation marks a loss for Washington and the end of a time when a former lawmaker could go halfway into private enterprise while keeping a hand in public service.
It goes on and on and on.
Poor Tom Daschell, who spent so much time working on good things.
Oh, and now we've lost that Tom Dashell.
He said he intended to work in issues like the global AIDS crisis.
He eventually joined hands with a man who had worked once worked to defeat him, former Senate Republican leader Bill Frisk to raise voter issue awareness of the issue, as well as health care, which had been a passion of his and the needs of American Indians.
But then Dashell said that he needed to make a living as well.
Read the tone of this thing.
Now imagine what the tone of the same story would do be the day after a Republican cabinet nominee had to bow out after he was exposed as a tax cheat.
I'll give you a better one.
Can you imagine?
What would happen if we found out that Rush wasn't declaring all of his income?
They would be bringing this up forever.
He's a tax date, he's a phone, he's a this, he's a that.
In other words, they would use it as a tool, but are they bothered by it per se?
No.
Which is why Dashell gets to walk away, which is why nobody asks any real questions about why Carolyn Kennedy bowed out of her quest for the Senate seat.
Why Tim Geithner gets to walk in and be Treasury Secretary even though for years he didn't pay some of his taxes?
So what really do Democrats stand for?
Do Democrats stand for high levels of taxation?
Or do they merely stand for the people they don't like paying high levels of taxation?
What is their real stance on it?
Interesting that they want everybody's taxes to be high, but they don't seem to have any real problem with Some of their own not paying anywhere near the taxes they're supposed to pay.
If there was a true principle here, if they truly believe that paying taxes was patriotic, they wouldn't be forgetting to declare FICA income like Geitner, or not mentioning the several hundred thousand dollars worth of car service, as Dashell didn't.
By the way, do we have that old Tom Dashell commercial?
I'll play this after the break.
You have to hear this.
Admittedly, it's old.
We found a Tom Dashell campaign ad from when he was running for the United States Senate.
I'm going to play that one after the break.
My name is Mark Belling, and I'm sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh 1800-282882 is the telephone number, Rush Lobo.com.
You can keep track of all things rush.
I was mentioning, going into the uh previous break, that we uncovered a campaign ad that Tom Daschell ran, admittedly, number of years ago when he was running for reelection of the Senate from South Dakota.
Now, in order to get the context of this ad, Dashell's excuse over not declaring his income, the car service use that he had for several years from one of his associates was that, you know, look, I was always a senator and I always had somebody giving me a ride to work.
It just never occurred to me to look upon this as income.
That's the excuse that we give.
Tom Dashell, Mr. Common Man.
Well, I never really thought that being given a ride to work and having access to a free luxury vehicle every day of my life was income.
This is the audio track.
It was a television ad, so you don't get the video, and you don't get to see the car that's referenced here.
But listen to how Tom Dashell was selling himself to the people back in South Dakota.
Among Washington's BMWs and limos is this.
Since 1971, the old Pontiac has served its owner well.
Sure, it's rusted.
And it burns a little oil.
But after 15 years and 238,000 miles, Tom Dashell still drives his old car to work every day.
Maybe he's sentimental.
Or just cheap.
Whatever the case, isn't it too bad the rest of Washington doesn't understand that a penny saved is a penny earned.
Rusted up car parked like in the parking lot by the Capitol, like that's what Dashell was actually doing.
There is a YouTube video out there of this if you want to do a search, which is the best way, I guess, to be able to find the thing.
Let's go down to St. Louis and Elizabeth.
Elizabeth, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Mark Belling.
Hi, good afternoon.
Hi.
You know, hearing you talk about Tom Dashell reminds me of something that happened to us.
Oh, a couple years ago, when we were paying paying our state quarterly tax, and my husband accidentally wrote the check to the state out of the wrong account, out of an account that had been closed.
And like two, I don't know, one or two days later, he realized it, and he immediately, you know, wrote it from the right check and sent it in.
We got fine, you know, we had a penalty, and we paid the tax.
So this is why And he caught it within two days.
Oh, immediately.
And uh you know, and alerted them themselves and paid it.
Oh, immediately.
Yeah, you got penalty.
No, yeah, and I noticed with regard to Dashell, he did pay interest, but there's no notion of any penalty or anything here.
The same thing with regard with regard to Geitner, who deliberately ran the statute of limitations out on the first two years of his payroll taxes.
These guys just walk away from it.
No criticism.
We're acting as though it's a terrible loss to the country that we're not going to have the service of Dashell, and nobody's even suggested that there might here be some reason to investigate the fact that he went all these years.
And let's face it, if Tom Dashell had not been nominated to the cabinet of the president of the United States, this never would have been caught, and one would presume that he would be continuing to not declare this as income.
The only reason we found out about it is because uh Obama tried to put him on the cabin.
All of these the these Obama nominees that appear don't pay their taxes.
The only reason we know about it is he's trying to put them on the cabinet.
If Obama wants to raise real money for the government, he ought to nominate every liberal to a government position.
We do the background check, they have to pay their taxes.
We're gonna be able to fund the entire stimulus package.
Exactly right.
And you know, I feel like Dashell dropped out so quickly that it almost seemed like it even took Obama by surprise.
The president by surprise.
And it makes you wonder you can't help but wonder that there's other stuff in those returns.
You know, that was somewhere else that he doesn't want people looking at.
No kidding.
I'd you know, look, check out the tax returns of any Democrat.
The thing that was so fishy about that is Obama the night before Dashell pulled out, gave him a full vote of confidence, then Dash will bows out, and then Obama goes on television and said, Well, we made a mistake by nominating him.
I'm disappointed that we didn't do a better job of scrutiny.
We made a mistake.
But then they also say that they didn't push Dashell out.
Well, if they didn't push him out, why was it a mistake to nominate him in the first place?
Whether he was pushed out or not, I think Obama senses that this has really hurt him, that the guy who is going to bring clin cleanliness and openness to government can't be able to put together a cabinet that doesn't include tax cheaters.
By the way, whether you like it or not, I'm going to be here tomorrow.
Uh before I completely depart this topic of Democrats and taxes, I find this that I mentioned how just indispensable the New York Times is.
A twenty-five, that's page twenty-five.
Wrangles financial disclosures omitted data over thirty years.
A report said Representative Charles Wrangles financial disclosure forms had at least twenty-eight omissions in the past thirty years and failed to account for what became of more than two hundred thirty-nine thousand dollars.
Yeah, Charlie Rangell, you realize how many speeches he's given about corporate greed and corporations moving their jobs overseas and ducking taxes and corporations that are moving operations overseas to avoid America, the whole thing.
Thirty years of this.
All right.
I want to talk about the digital TV delay.
Now you East Coast elites don't know anything about this, do you?
Because you all have cable or you all have satellite TV.
In the real world, there are some people who don't.
This has been talked about literally for years.
And I don't want to get into the technical part of it because there are whenever you talk about anything having to do with technology, there are geeks who want to explain it to you in geek language.
I don't fully understand the difference between digital and analog, but I do know the digital is better.
Television stations currently broadcast in both analog and digital.
For most, not all, there are exceptions here, and please don't worry about the quibble, the quibble part.
But for most people who have cable or satellite services, they don't have to do anything because they're already getting their signals delivered on a digital basis.
There are some exceptions to that which aren't that important, but they do exist.
This primarily affects people who don't have cable or don't have a satellite service and get their television signals with regular antennas or rabbit ears and get the signal over the air into their home that way.
If they have television sets that aren't new, those TV sets are receiving those signals in an analog format.
For years there has been a push to discontinue the analog transmission simply because digital is better, and most people are getting it in digital anyway.
So a year ago, the government set this deadline of February 17th of this month for this for the total switchover, and they distributed hundreds of thousands, millions of coupons for $40 off a converter.
The converters cost anywhere from about $45, $50, some are cheaper, to a lot of money.
Apparently, you can get a really, really great converter or one that does the job.
The coupons get gobbled up.
People go out and buy converters.
In fact, they used up all the coupons that the government printed, and they use up the entire budget for it.
So now here we're coming to February 17th.
Not everybody has gotten a converter box because some people want to get coupons and there are no coupons currently available.
So the Congress yesterday gave final passage to a bill that pushes this back again until June twelfth.
So people are going to get another four months.
This is the Obama's going to sign the legislation he supported it.
In his inauguration, which I'll keep reminding people, was only two weeks ago, he called for what?
A new era of responsibility.
Yet we can't even Hold people responsible for in one year buying a stupid little box to be able to receive their television signals.
I guarantee you, four months from now, right before June 12th, you are going to have the same complaints that there are still a lot of Americans who aren't ready.
They're going to turn on their televisions at June 12th, and there's going to be no signal there.
You could push this back seven times, and the same procrastinators aren't going to go out and get their converter boxes.
That we're always told, well, they're senior citizens, as if that has something to do with this.
And I can tell you, as somebody who actually talks to people about things like this, that that is exactly untrue.
The very first people to go out and get their coupons and get their converter boxes were senior citizens.
Senior citizens never procrastinate.
The people who procrastinate are guys like you who live out there in the suburbs.
The middle class procrastinates.
This issue is typical of how we approach every single problem in this country.
Everyone knows that we have an entitlement crisis coming.
Social Security is going to go broke.
We all know the numbers.
The baby boomers are going to go out of the system all at once in massive numbers.
The generation Xers who are the generation right behind them do not exist in big enough numbers to pay the Social Security benefits of all the baby boomers who will dump onto the system at once.
The baby boomers will no longer be paying Social Security taxes, but instead will be drawing out.
And because life expectancy gets longer every year, they're going to live forever.
The same problem exists with Medicare.
We have long-term unfunded liabilities with these problem with these two programs, but we don't deal with it because they're not broke yet.
We deal with all public policy questions this way.
Look at the democratic approach right now to terrorism.
Obama's talking about closing getmo.
He's talking about taking a new approach.
The moment that you have another terror attack, you'll have the panic.
Look at our dealings about Iran's looming potential of getting a nuclear bomb.
We'll confront that, I suppose, once they have the nuclear bomb.
If we as a country can't even get people to buy a stupid box to change the way they get TV signals and give them a year, it's hopeless.
Now, some people argue, well, they should have printed more coupons.
Do you know why they don't have?
You know why they ran out of coupons?
I'll tell you why.
Because a lot of sharp people knew exactly what was going to happen here.
People who did not need the coupons, applied for the coupons so they could go out and buy a converter box and sell them right now to the people who didn't get the coupons in the first place.
If you go on eBay right now, you will see zillions of these converter boxes for sale for less money than you would have to pay if you went into a department store and went in to buy them.
Because people went out and got their coupons, got the $40 off, so they're going to make the profit now by reselling their converter boxes.
If we issue 10 million more coupons, the same people will do the exact same thing and they're going to go out and buy converter boxes to sell to people who wait until the last minute.
I think this delay is ridiculous.
What's the harm?
Well, part of the harm is we're going to keep printing out more coupons and give even more money to people to go out and buy these converter boxes.
But secondly, you are requiring all of these broadcast stations to continue to broadcast analog signals at tremendous cost.
They've got a digital signal going out and an analog signal going out, which is totally wasted money.
All to indulge people who can't get their act together and buy a box so they can watch their television set.
Let's go to Jason in North Dakota.
Jason, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Mark Belling.
Hello, Jason.
All right, Jason's not there.
You can tell me whether or not you agree with me.
You guys all have cable, right?
Yeah.
So you don't have to worry about this.
You can't imagine not having cable.
You can't imagine that in the real world there are some people who don't want to spend a fortune on their television signals.
Well, those are the people.
Those are the people that are affected here.
Now, I don't know that we should have issued the $40 coupons in the first place.
We have had changes in technology forever that have required consumers to upgrade what they receive.
Everybody at one point had an eight track.
When the eight tracks went out of vogue and everybody got a cassette player, nobody gave me a $40 coupon to upgrade a cassette.
Then people stopped using cassette players because the CDs came around.
We didn't give a $40 coupon for that.
So I don't know what the great requirement is for uh coupons for digital television conversion, but some people seem to think that they shouldn't have to go out and buy these on their own, but they have been given more than enough warning that this change was going to come in place, and I don't believe we should indulge people who are dragging their feet at the expense of people who were responsible enough to go out and buy these boxes in the first place.
My name is Mark Belling, and I'm sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
By the way, have you noticed how much uh Obama's press secretary looks like John Clayton of ESPN?
The guy that doesn't look at him up there.
They both have that kind of Wally Cox look to them.
Uh I don't I'm going to be accused of making too big of a deal about this digital TV conversion, but I just think that you can see exactly what happens when everybody becomes dependent upon the government for everything.
We're now dependent on the government giving us a coupon to make it easier for us to receive television signals.
If we can't even handle that, how are we ever going to have uh handle the gut being dependent upon the government for our health care?
To uh South Carolina on a cell phone, John, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Mark Belling.
Hey, Mark, uh, this is John Collin.
Uh my question is uh what business the government have of trying to furnish people with a box to be able to look at television?
That's uh something that people ought to take on their own to do.
I mean, we it started when the government started issuing food stamps because we can't have people starving to death.
Then we have the government providing Medicare because we can't have elderly people not getting medical care, and it's extending to everything.
We've now apparently decided that receiving television in the proper format is some sort of vital need that the government has to provide for.
And then they issued millions of coupons and it's never enough.
Has there ever, ever been a government program where whatever was spent was enough?
Ever in the history of government programs did they ever say, you know, we spent all this money and there was still some left over.
There's nothing else to do.
You could have printed a coupon for every man, woman, and child in this country, and they still would have ended up running out.
So after having all this on the people who didn't apply for the coupons in time, some of them don't have it, and we've got to delay this change for four months just so we can print even more coupons and spend even more money so people can go out and buy a box to upgrade their television sets.
Some of these people have 50-inch flat screen TVs, and we've got to pay to give them a box, and we've now got to give we've now got to wait another four months before making this switch over because they couldn't get their act together.
It's just silly, but it's a metaphor for what happens when we decide that government is going to provide absolutely everything to everyone.
Pardon me, John.
I watch you, we have to buy it for them, and that's what's doing to taxpayers as the one paying for it.
Yeah, well, you're right.
This is all public money.
To Neosho Mar um Nyosho, Missouri and another j uh uh Rob, you're on uh the Rush Limbaugh program with Mark Belling.
Hey, Mark, you do a great job sitting in for Rush.
Thank you.
I just wanted to tell you, I absolutely agree with you.
I happen to live in an area.
We have a satellite provider that doesn't provide our local, we don't get our locals over satellite.
Right.
That's one of the exemptions.
If you have a satellite, I don't want to confuse people, but if you have satellite TV and you don't get your local channels through the satellite, you still have the over the eighth.
We're one of the four or five percent out there that doesn't.
We've got a rooftop, we've actually got an antenna in our attic, so we receive local channels over the rooftop antenna.
But it's absolutely ridiculous that we would that we would push this back.
I thought the house did it right the first time.
These channels, all of these broadcasting channels have put in tons of engineering hours, tens of thousands of dollars in cost to change the towers, change the broadcasts.
They've got crews coming in, a lot of them to make the change because they're both broadcasting in analog and digital, and can't do both of those at full power at the same time.
So on the 17th, everybody had everything scheduled for the crews to come in and make the switch.
and they say people weren't aware this was coming.
I don't know about your area.
In Milwaukee, the TV stations have been talking about this nonstop.
They even had a segment where the anchors of every single television station went out and they simulcast it on all the TV stations to advise people that this was coming.
There was notice upon notice upon notice upon notice.
Anyone who didn't know this was happening wasn't paying any attention at all.
And why do we have to keep indulging people who can't get their act together and go out and get a box?
And as for not being able to to afford the $40, that's precisely why they printed these coupons.
What we have gotten to in this country, and Obama's continuing this now, is any time anyone claims that anything is a hardship, all they have to do is lump it under the poor and the elderly, may not get this, may not get that, and it becomes the excuse for not holding anyone responsible for anything.
We're asking government to take our hands and walk us through life.
There's another part of this.
Once you finally get done with the analog broadcasting, you can free up that part of the spectrum so that it can be used for other things.
And I think, and I might be wrong about this.
I think a couple of the cell phone companies uh want to go out and use that spectrum.
Rome, Georgia, and Ginger, you're on News Talk 1130 WISN.
Hey, Mark.
You know, normally I'm opposed, and I was opposed to this whole thing.
What did I say?
Did I say my own Milwaukee call letters?
I've got an entire business.
This is why they only bring me in once a year.
Yeah, you're on WISN would be the station you're on a military.
Well, she is on WISN.
She's also on all nine trillion other stations.
EIB carries.
Go ahead, Jim.
Anyway, this my point is this was not a consumer-driven technology upgrade as the eight eight-track two cassette.
No, yes, it is.
No, it isn't.
This was a government mandate.
Well, it wasn't.
Yeah, yes, and no.
Everything has gone to digital.
You can't find anything that's still analog in our society.
Everything is now digital.
The reason that there was there was a government mandate is you had to come up with a specific time that everybody would do the switchover.
You'd have some television stations going in digital and some an analog, but no, the digital thing was going to happen.
The government merely set the date by which it had to occur for every station.
But without but without regard to that, so what?
And the issue is that first of all, there are people that I don't have an issue because I have satellites, but there are people who are having a great deal of problem getting them to work.
Again, so what?
Buy one that works.
Why is it the responsibility of the taxpayers to work people through this?
You know, I'm out, I'm out there right now shopping for a digital camera.
I don't know how to work one.
I'm gonna learn how to do it.
I'm not asking for a coupon to be able to do it.
Do we really need Barack Obama and his government to walk us through life?
And if they couldn't get this figured out by February, are you telling me that they're gonna be any smarter by June?
The answer is they're not.
I'm Mark Belling, and this is EIB.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush.
There is some good news about all of this.
See how I can kind of tie everything together.
I'm going to try at least.
The 148,000 in back taxes that Tom Dashell is now paying, now that he's been told that, you know, Tom, you can't get hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of free automobile use without paying taxes on it.
The 148,000 that he uses, if we just apply Dashell's back tax payment, we can, at $40 a pop for these digital TV coupons, $3,600 more Americans will now be able to get coupons to convert their televisions to digital just because Tom Dashel is paying back paying his back taxes.
Can you imagine how many more people would be able to watch television if Charlie Rangel paid everything he owed?
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