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Feb. 23, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:37
February 23, 2009, Monday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of The Rush 24-7 podcast.
Try this headline, ladies and gentlemen.
It's in the Boston Globe today by Jen Abelson for now, laid off and loving it.
Some are finding respite in a life without work.
Now that Obama is in office, it's the happy unemployed.
The unemployed are happy.
They get more time with the dog.
They get more time with the kid.
They get more time for each other and for themselves.
It's an amazing transformation.
The unemployed are happy, says the Boston Globe Media cover once again.
Great to have you with us, folks.
A brand new week of broadcast excellence.
Yeah, underway.
The email address is El Rushbo at EIB net.
Well, Obama's got this big quasi State of the Union speech tomorrow night.
Bobby Gindle's going to be doing the Republican response.
The drive-by media is already hitting Bobby Gendal, linking him with me.
Now I had a meeting.
I have to tell you this.
After the program on Friday, I had a meeting with a high-ranking Republican, doesn't matter who.
And uh the high-ranking Republican said to me, you know, I I just I I was I was stunned when I heard that Obama mentioned your name in in that meeting with uh with Republican and Democrat leaders as somebody shouldn't be listened to.
I said, Why were you surprised about that?
Well, well, why why bring you up?
I mean, all it's gonna do, all it's gonna do is increase your uh your ratings and finance and so forth.
I said, Well, let me tell you why he did it.
He's trying to marginalize me.
He was trying to, I mean, he just previously had had dinner with ten quasi-conservative columnists the inside of Beltway establishment of conservatives, and he wanted to marginalize me as the quote unquote voice of conservatism as some fringe character, and he's hoping that some of the Republicans in that meeting would come out of there and also agree with him.
And the high-ranking Republican looked at me and said, Um, Rush, now come on, this guy's not that calculating.
He's he's really not that smart.
And I just I just stared.
I just stared.
And uh in some incredulity uh out there.
Well, I didn't stare that much, but I I I argued back.
I said, no, I I I think there's an attempt here to marginalize mainstream conservatism as fringe, and that's why they're now linking Jindle with me.
We have the audio sound bites on this uh as the program unfolds before your very eyes.
I also heard, not from the same guy, but I I also heard that the uh official elected Republican strategy in uh in Washington is to not criticize Obama directly, but instead to go after Pelosi and Reed.
Now, the theory on this, uh, ladies and gentlemen, is that the um uh president's approval rating 65% makes no sense to attack him.
Gotta go after Pelosi and Reed, whose approval numbers at 20%.
And the Republicans said, Look, his numbers are 65%.
Only he can bring his approval rating down.
I said, What do you think happened to George W. Bush for eight years?
A daily pounding by the Democrats, by the media, by special interest groups.
All of it brought his approval number down to 29%.
You think Bush alone brought his approval number down to 29%?
I mean, it was a daily drum beat.
Of course, you can bring his you can approval numbers down.
But they don't think that that's the way to go.
So, anyway, I just wanted to pass that along.
Well, I don't know that well, they didn't say to me, Mr. Snerdley, that what they're going to do is leave it to me again.
I don't know.
I uh I don't know if that's what they if that's what they mean.
Obama announced, by the way, this this big deal coming up on um tomorrow night.
He's gonna announce his tax increases.
And and and the folks, the wrong way to talk about this is Obama is going to raise taxes on the wealthy.
That is the wrong way to talk about this, because what's gonna happen is that the Bush tax cuts are gonna be allowed to perspire in 2011, and that will move the current top marginal rate from 35 up to 39.6, effectively 40%, And this is on incomes over $250,000 a year.
This is a massive in the midst of a recession tax increase on small business.
It is not a tax on the wealthy.
I mean, it is, but it's that's it's going to hit far many more small business people than it's going to hit the wealthy.
And by the way, these are the people that are going to do the hiring once the recession ends and we start coming back.
But will the unemployed want to go back to work?
Because they again go back to the Boston Globe for now, laid off and loving it.
You want to hear some details from this story?
A few days after David Adler's wife decided to leave her law firm in December, he was laid off from his job designing software.
It was shocking and scary until it wasn't.
Adler has quickly learned to appreciate some aspects of his unexpected unemployment.
Would you have ever seen this story just one year ago?
Well, we didn't see this story during the Bush years.
A 42-year-old spends his days doting on his six-month-old daughter, visiting museums with the family, and preparing for a possible exhibit of his photos at a local coffee shop.
Living off savings, unemployment, and severance packages.
Adler knows he has to get a job eventually.
Oh, it's too bad, isn't it?
And he started the search, but for now he's cherishing every moment.
Yes, it's our first child.
I love watching her grow, and it's nice to have time off and get in touch with my old hobbies.
As the ranks of the nation's unemployed grows, more Americans are facing the reality of life without work.
Despite the grim task of making ends meet, such as firing the nanny, bailing out on whole foods, applying for unemployment parentheses.
There's a newly forming society of people who are making the best of being laid off.
They are rediscovering hobbies.
They are greeting kids at the screwbust.
They are remembering what daylight actually looks like.
Oh, jeez.
These are the people to whom we're extending benefits.
Well, who do you think is going to pay for all these people to sit around and get touch with their hobbies, go to the, you know, post their photographs at some coffee shop where you can't see the photographs because of the smell, the acrid smell of the doobies.
And the massive layoffs by companies nationwide, 600,000 jobs lost last month, has helped remove the stigma of being unemployed and the shame of being unemployed, according to John Challenger of the Challenger Gray and Christmas outplacement firm.
There's less of a why aren't you working attitude that's giving people some extra space?
John Stephen Dwyer so far isn't missing his job or former office overlooking Chinatown.
Forty-one-year-old Boston native.
Laid off in November from his 40,000 a year job as education coordinator for the clinical research graduate program of Tufts University Sackler School of Biomedical Sciences.
Can I go through that again?
The guy makes or made 40,000 a year as education coordinator.
What is an education coordinator?
Now I know what a vision control coordinator is.
A vision control coordinator is a window washer.
I don't know what an education coordinator is, but anyway, he had that job.
For the clinical research graduate program of Tufts University Sackler School of Biomedical Scientists.
And he hasn't seriously started looking for new work yet.
It's the success syndrome, said Douglas T. Hall, a professor at Boston University School of Management.
You work hard, you do well, it's very satisfying, and that gets you more involved to start working even harder.
It's a success spiral that people get into and sometimes take some extreme experience to get out of that spiral.
Such as being I um yeah, I've been in a success spiral for when did my success spiral begin.
My success spiral began.
I'd have to say in 1984 when I moved to Sacramento.
And I have been in that success spiral, and the last thing the hell I want to do is get out of it.
Mm-hmm.
Well, no, you no, you you go to the success spiral, but then when there's interruption in a success spiral, like when you get canned, then that's when you start posting your pictures at the local coffee shop, go out there, take pictures, uh, travel around, visit museums, read national geographic, look pictures of places you'll never visit, either in person or in real life.
Play around with a six-year-old, clean up the puke and the pablum, all these things that you know you don't get to do.
Experience what daylight looks like, the sun, because you don't get to do that.
Yes, uh, laid off and loving it.
Now, this is media cover for what's happening is so many people unemployed, there's no stigma attached to it.
So, anyway, the small business people who hire the newly happy unemployed are gonna be soaked with a 40% tax break.
Most small businesses file on their personal income tax return.
Most of them are subchapter S corporations, and they file on their personal return, which makes which makes their uh their effective race gonna be 40%, not their effective, but their their new rate uh will be in a couple years, 2011 or so will be 40% smack dab in the middle of a recession.
This is this is this is disastrous, but don't call it, don't call it a tax increase on the rich.
It's not that small businesses of 250 grand or larger are not rich people.
They're gonna pay the brunt.
And once again, what this all adds up to is you've got a world view of a bunch of people in this administration with a chip on their shoulder who look at the people who they think are rich.
They think those people are rich because they've been unfair, they have stolen or they have taken more than their share from the economic pie.
That's why there are poor people, and so the chip on the shoulder is going to lead us now to level the playing field by spreading as much misery equally as possible.
Lawmakers, sorry, lawyers hired by Freddie Mack are quietly investigating themselves.
That two million dollar lobbying campaign.
What Freddie Mac is investigating itself over a lobbying campaign.
The last time this happened was when the Obama team investigated itself on whether or not they had approached Blogo and offered to pay him something for the Senate seat that Burris now has.
Now they're talking of impeaching Burris, or not impeach uh they impeached Blogo.
No, they're talking about a trial, some sort of problem that they that they've got with uh Burris.
You know what?
I'm in the middle of a New York State tax audit.
I've been in the middle of a New York State tax audit since October.
I have been audited every year since I left New York State, starting in 1997.
I think I'm gonna tell a tax lawyer to call up the accountant at the uh tax firm, the taxing authority, say, look, we're we've investigated ourselves here.
And I I have found that I've paid more than I actually owe just to keep you people off my back, but it isn't working.
Think that would fly?
And then when I get my first Obama-inspired federal audit, I'm gonna try the same thing.
We've investigated well, I know it won't fly, but I'm gonna try it.
I'm gonna try it.
I know my last name or Geitner, if my last name were uh Dashel, it would work.
Wrangle, you know, but uh I've I've I investigate myself every year anyway when I file a return.
And I and I haven't found myself to be doing anything wrong.
Uh you lefties out there, you know, there's there's news that's sort of what's happening in the era of area foreign policy.
There are a lot of screw-ups going on out there, but because of the domestic turmoil, nobody is noticing.
John Kerry, who served in Vietnam, the haughty John Kerry, went in there and talked to Basher Assad of Syria, and basically spent the whole time trashing the Bush administration.
It's a new day.
We're prepared to listen to you.
And the only people gonna make any changes in foreign policy, apparently is the United States.
Uh uh the Obama team wants to hold on to these uh regulations, allow them to spy on phone calls.
And then there's this.
The Obama administration side, oh, there's another one.
The Obama administration siding with the Bush team on emails.
Remember, there's a bunch of emails supposedly missing from the Bush administration.
The lefties want them for their truth squad.
Uh and and the administration of Obama said, no, no, no, no, we're not gonna we're not gonna join in that.
Now, this, the Obama administration siding with the Bush White House.
Contended uh Friday that detainees in Afghanistan have no constitutional rights.
I read that right.
Who wrote this?
Nedra!
Nedra Pickler, old buddy from AP, and Matt Apuzzo.
In a two-sentence court filing, the Obama Justice Department, which thinks all of us are a bunch of race cowards, said that it agreed that detainees at Bagram Airfield cannot use U.S. courts to challenge their detention.
The filing shocked human rights attorneys.
The hope we all had an Obama to lead us on a different path is not turned out as we'd hoped, said Tina Munshipper.
Sorry, that's the middle name.
Tina Mun Shipper Foster, human rights attorney representing a detainee at Bagram.
We all expected better.
This is scant satisfaction, but it is funny to watch these lefties go absolutely wacko over this.
Detainees in Afghanistan have no constitutional rights.
Now, what the hell's the difference in the President Bagram and Club Gitmo?
Publicity is the only difference.
Exactly right.
Publicity.
And finally, Obama with a major, major PR stunt is bringing together dozens of advisors and uh adversaries to discuss how to curb a burgeoning federal deficit laden with Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid obligations.
How many times has this been done?
This is pure show.
Pure PR.
If you want to fix those problems, you don't do the stimulus bill, and you don't do another stimulus bill.
And you treat seriously try to reform these plans with market-based solutions.
Well, we know that's not going to happen, so this is just smoking mirrors.
Did you know I did not even know this until I was an advertising age today?
Miller.
Miller High Life.
You drink Miller Lite, Brian, now and then?
You do.
You do.
Don, you like Miller High Life?
Do you Miller Light?
Okay.
Did you know that they ran one second ads in the Super Bowl?
And they put those ads out on the web before the Super Bowl game.
One second ads.
And it was one of the characters that they've used in their Miller campaign for months.
And all a guy said in his one second ads, he was seated someplace recognizable to people who've seen the previous ads.
He just shouts, High Life!
It's Miller High Life.
Their sales are up 8.6% since the Super Bowl.
And in their website, when they posted these ads on the web, they said, who the hell needs to spend $3 million for four and a half minutes of commercials, which everybody thought was a dig at Anheuser Bush, which bought four and a half minutes worth of uh spot time on the on the Super Bowl.
So these spots did not even run in one hundred in one hundred markets.
I didn't see one.
I watch now I I don't I'm not one of these people stays tuned uh for the Super Bowl ads, because I've got guests there, and I you know start talking to people about what we just saw action on the field.
One second.
One second ads, their sales are up 8.6%.
Brevity is the soul of wit, and doing much more with less is the lesson there.
Be right back.
Don't go away.
I have not seen Slumdog Millionaire.
I have not seen it.
I have no plans to see it.
None of the movies I like are ever nominated.
I don't know why.
You know, I watched a little bit of the epidemic awards last night.
Folks, did you I it was it.
I'll tell you, the forget Sean Penn.
I mean, the thing Sean Penn said about gay rights, it's a look at predictable.
I mean, Hollywood is is is made up of uh a lot of people that work there are gay in the arts and so forth, and it's it's it's just a natural conclude every year that you're gonna have politicised gay statements and people who make them be rewarded.
It's just it's what Hollywood is.
No biggie.
However, this new format of best actor, best actress, supporting actors, supporting actress, and have these five actors come out there, and each one address one of the nominees.
I mean, it was sick.
It was sick.
These actors and actresses, particularly the actresses, were being fetted and portrayed as though they were the real life people they were pretending to be.
If I didn't know better, I would say, uh, and I I look, I haven't seen the reader with Kate Winslett.
I haven't seen it, but I would think that Kate Winslett was the actual person that somebody else portrayed in the movie, that Kate Winslett actually did all the great work.
And it reminded me of the time at Alan Cranston, uh, who was uh a member is cadaverous when he was in the U.S. set up in California, invited a couple actresses in there, and they got Jessica Lang and somebody else to talk about farm problems in the Midwest because they had played a couple of poor farm wives.
Now they're just getting these actresses up there because that's the only way they can get girls is to use the power of the office to get them up there, but to have them in there as experts, and it is this narcissistic sense of self-importance.
There was so little humility.
What I I don't remember what was said, but whoever it was that said whatever they said to Anne Hathaway last night.
And Anne Hathaway stood there crying and oh, it's a it just I I can't.
I just can't imagine people who would even format something like this.
By the way, we're gonna need a bailout of weight loss systems.
Jenny Craig down big time, Nutra System down big time, both companies uh talking about the need to lay people off.
Uh how can the Obama administration not bail out the weight loss industry?
And I'm sure that improved health and lower health care costs are critical of these people.
Next to smoking, the most expensive thing people do that causes health problems is overeat.
So um why why no subsidizing of uh of Nutra System and Jenny Craig and all these other diet?
It's bad news for America's obesity problem out there.
Meeting and surpassing all audience expectations on a daily basis, Rush Limbaugh often imitated, never equaled.
Here from the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, Citigroup reportedly, why we check this the uh price here for City.
What is the well, they're up above two bucks at two bucks and eleven cents.
They were just under two bucks on Friday, the uh Dow Jones Industrial Average down one nineteen.
There is absolute, no matter where you look in the market, which is where the real polling data is on all these plans coming out of Washington, you don't find anybody that is confident.
You don't find any institution that is confident about what is happening.
And now this Citigroup is reportedly negotiating with government officials to have the United States government boost its stake in the troubled bank to as much as 40%.
That's 10% shy of nationalization, which the Obama administration said last week, no, no, no, no, no.
We're not thinking about a nationalized bank.
No, no, no, no, no, no way.
Of course, those statements of Obamas all have expiration dates.
Such a move by Citigroup would result in the New York-based bank ceding far more control to the feds than executives likely desire, and would dilute shareholders' investments.
The Wall Street Journal, which said Citigroup made the proposal to which regulators noted that sources say executives would prefer to keep the government stake closer to 25%.
Twenty-five percent, forty percent, five percent.
What the hell difference does it matter?
We're gonna get more Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac.
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac were sold to us as private sector institutions that were owned by the government.
That is not possible.
And we see what happened with both those.
They are at the root of the housing problem.
By the way, the mortgage thing just continues to percolate out there.
There are more and more people getting fed up that they are gonna be bailing out people who refuse or never could pay.
And do you know that this is a five-state problem?
Do his mortgage business is a five-state problem.
You probably have heard by the way, Citigroup, look before I move on from this.
Citigroup, uh that Robin Robert Rubin from the Clinton Treasury Department moved in.
He used to be Goldman Sachs, and he goes over to Clinton and he leaves there, goes to Citigroup as the big savior, resigns after taking it to the toilet.
So you have Citigroup run, owned and operated by Democrats.
You have Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac run, owned and operated by Democrats.
You got Goldman Sachs, mostly run and operated by Democrats.
Anybody see a pattern here?
I just some of this stuff, it's just it it it's it's too incredulous to believe it.
All of this is coincidence.
Let me find these five states.
These five states were most here they are.
Nevada.
You tell me, by the way, when I go through these five states, except for one of them, you tell me that the people in these states are dirt poor, that these are the people who had uh the just the unfortunate losers in life's lottery.
Nevada.
You know people moving to Nevada move to Las Vegas and Reno for the anticipation of big bucks.
Have you seen what's happening to the uh business meetings industry, the golf.
I have a friend.
Now get this.
I have let me and let me check.
I want to make sure I get the uh comp.
Yes.
Well, I'm not gonna mention the company, but if I did, because it would give away the the uh place.
I don't want to give away the place.
It's a r it's a big resort.
There is a Wall Street firm that every year plans a giant week-long seminar to teach people how to make money, their clients and customers.
Now they they what what happens is that uh they bring in these people, like a hedge fund conference, and it generates a lot of money.
They charge $3,000 a person to come in, stay at the resort, and listen to experts testifying how they can make big money.
This Wall Street firm canceled at a full penalty.
They had to pay the resort the one million dollars, the resort's gonna get the one million dollars.
They put that in the contract because they had to book practically the whole resort, and they couldn't book anything because these guys had taken it all up.
The cancellation came too late to open it up.
So they they had a writer in the contract that if you cancel you don't do this, you still have to pay the full boat, which is a million dollars.
So the Wall Street firm, this is this year, paid the million dollars, they took the loss, all to make sure that nobody knew they went.
The only reason they canceled, because they didn't want it getting in the news that they had gone to the resort to conduct a three or four-day seminar on hedge funds and how to make money in them.
They thought it was worth losing a million dollars to avoid press coverage.
Now, this is fear.
Because if you are taking bailout money, and this bunch is, if you're taking bailout money and you're getting dragged up, your CEO's getting dragged up to face Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, and then the president of the United States gets on his high horse and starts ripping you a new one.
It's probably worth it to you to throw away a million dollars and cancel your money-making seminar.
It's a profit center that they do.
Cancel it because it's at a big resort.
So nobody knows you had it.
Because you didn't have it.
You didn't do it.
Fear, paranoia, not just of the public, but of elected officials, fear of government.
Now, these are the big and brightest titans we supposedly have on Wall Street.
And I'm gonna tell you, folks, if they are scared to death to the point that they will throw away a million dollars to avoid bad PR, quote unquote.
Can you imagine the kind of fear that's going to be engendered in the hearts and minds of average Americans?
Or that could be generated in the hearts and minds of average Americans.
Now other resorts are also getting these kinds of cancellations, but some of them do not have contractual writers that say they get Paid anyway.
The golf resort business is way down.
Any of these giant resorts around the country where big meetings are held to facilitate business.
All because the AIG guys, after they got their bailout, they went out to some spa someplace in the PR or it just it infuriates me that this kind of silly public relations and the holier than now attitude of people who've never done business with any of these firms can get this whole thing shot down.
I mean, everything in this economy is under assault.
It's being slowed down or targeted.
What about, you know, we we hear that we hear that the a what was it, Merrill Lynch.
1.2 million to redecorate an executive suite.
All hell broke loose.
1.2 mil.
And that was before TARP money.
And that was considered so bad the CEO gets canned.
So now here's another Wall Street firm throwing away one million dollars on nothing.
Nobody got anything for it.
There was no stimulus other than the resort got its million dollars.
But none of the employees of the resort got any tips.
The restaurant didn't have any customers.
It was uh, you know, they they got their booking fee, but they didn't get what they were going to get if had the all the people shown up.
And so how silly is this?
How absolutely stupid.
Just throw away one million dollars to avoid the bad PR.
Anyway, here are the five states with the leading number of foreclosures.
Nevada number one, California number two, Arizona number three, Michigan number four.
Michigan's the only one of these states with what you would consider to be direct, well, California as well.
It's a mess out there, but uh you you don't you don't think of California uh as a state such as New York or others with just everywhere you look, massive rampant poverty.
Uh and then number five is Florida.
Number five is Florida.
In most of the United States, this mortgage quote unquote crisis seems pretty manageable, but five states are weighing us down.
In Nevada, the uh mortgages underwater is about 48%.
In California, 27%.
Arizona, 29%.
Michigan, 38.6%, and California or Florida is 29.2%.
Those of all mortgages in the state, those are the percentages underwater.
What do you think New York's percentage of mortgages underwater is?
Four.
4.4%.
The national average for mortgages underwater is 14.7%.
Nevada 47, 48%, 27% California, 29% Arizona, 39% Michigan, and 29% Florida.
So it's not a nationwide problem, is the point.
It's not a crisis that's affecting everybody nationwide, but it provides photo ops and sob stories for the Obama administration to uh to go ahead and uh make this a big national concern and a sense of duty that we pay for these poor people who had no business being given loans in the uh in the process.
I gotta take a brief time out.
We'll do that.
I have a I have an excerpt from a sports book I want to read to you when we come back for it a teachable moment here.
And what it is is one of the best indictments of moderates.
The best indictments of independence I've ever heard, and it comes from the world of the National Football League.
Stay with us.
Those uh those five, I want to give you something to think about.
Those five states that I just read, California, Arizona, Nevada, Florida, Michigan, with the highest foreclosure rates.
Um not so sure about Michigan, but it could be, but all of those states have an inordinately high percentage of illegal immigrants.
Now, the next question is are we giving mortgages to illegal immigrants?
Well, it is.
For some, I I guarantee you there'd be a lot of people who don't live in those states who would be stunned to learn that illegal immigrants are getting mortgages.
I I know exactly what the no verification thing was all about.
It wasn't just about illegal immigrants, it was making sure the poor got in there regardless of the reason they're poor.
Now, not every illegal immigrant had a mortgage, but in these states, you I guarantee you throw that into the mix for people that even that live in those states, who know it, but I mean you throw that into the mix for people who don't live in those states to find out not only were we are we, not funny, but what the hell else are we gonna do here?
When you throw in the fact that we're bailing out, you are paying, perhaps paying the mortgages for illegal immigrants in addition to welfare for them and health care for their kids.
When you find out how money, when we don't know what the percentage of these uh foreclosures that people are going to be uh exempted from happen to be illegal immigrants, do you think that might start a little uh what we call a rush fire around the around the country?
Now I want to read excerpts of this is something to think about.
I want to um I want to read uh some excerpts from this book.
In the National Football League right now, there are two teams that all the other teams want to be like.
One team is the Pittsburgh Steelers, the other is the New England Patriots.
Because they seem they never very rarely enter the free agent market.
The Patriots do sometimes.
They'll pick up some people everybody thinks are beyond the uh peak, beyond their prime, but somehow they end up where Corey Dillon is an example, uh, Junior Sayau linebacker.
But those two teams are the model franchises, and the Kansas City Chiefs just hired Scott Peoli, who was the general manager of the Patriots, to come in and run the Chiefs.
The Hunt family loves Peoli.
Peoli, by the way, is the uh the son-in-law of Bill Parcells of the New York Giants, New York Jets, Dallas Cowboys, and on the Miami Dolphins.
In the Jabari Holloway case, Peoli says he should have trusted his instincts.
The tight end from Notre Dame made him nervous as soon as Peoli found out why he was late for practice.
Chemistry class.
Now, listen to this moms.
By your senior year in college football, it better be a priority if you're going to be in the NFL, said Peoli.
And I don't care about chemistry labs.
You know what?
You can come back and get your grades.
To me, that explains something larger was going on in this man's life.
That there were other things in life clearly more important in football.
He could have done it some other way where it didn't interfere with the football.
That bothered me.
But I drafted him anyway with their second fourth round pick in the spring of 2001.
He didn't last long.
They drafted a tight end Daniel Graham in the first round of O2, released Holloway, signs on with the Houston, Texas.
This is how a segment of the Patriots program works.
It's driven by a concept that is rare not only in sports but in American society.
The idea in a country full of social and entertainment options is that the obligations of the job and the devotion to and mastery of the job are an employees' top priority.
The Patriots are attempting to stack their roster with productive players who either think that way now or are on the cusp of a conversion.
They don't want to be paternalistic figures asking the players, did you put in extra film time?
They want the players to do it without being asked.
Now, as I read through this, remember that story from the top of the program today about these newly happy unemployed people.
And think about whether you'd like to hire them once the time comes to start hiring back.
Here's more.
That is how a segment of the Patriots program works.
It's driven by a concept that's rare not only in sports, but in American society.
You do what you're expected to do without being asked.
Pioli says, look, I'm looking at it from an employer standpoint.
What else is this player going to have in his life that's more important than football, other than a chemistry lab?
I can't always put my values on to people, but here's what I know.
My job is to find players for a head coach who wants football to be the most important thing in their worlds, and I believe in it.
Peoli's opinions, like Belichick's the coach, are so clear and blunt that there's little, if any, room for misunderstandings.
In fact, it is written in the Patriots Manual that all scouts must have a clear opinion on prospects.
Neutrality or passive aggressiveness can get you fired.
You actually get credit when you logically disagree with the boss.
I want them to know their opinion is important, says Pioli.
As a matter of fact, it's so important that part of the evaluation of you is going to be whether or not you have one.
Now, this is one of the greatest indictments, and this is a book, by the way, about the Patriots called the Patriot Reign.
I'm reading from chapter 9 called Finding the Missing Pieces.
And this is all about people who the most important thing in their life is the job.
And the people who work there had better have opinions on things, no moderate squishy squashiness, or you don't last.
Great life lessons, I think.
Back after this.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am embarrassed.
I have just found out that I, L. Rushball, personally, will benefit from the porculus bill.
And it just embarrassing.
I don't know.
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