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March 6, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:01
March 6, 2009, Friday, Hour #2
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The views expressed by the host on this program documented to be almost always right.
99% of the time, greetings, my friends, to the most listened to radio talk show in America, hosted by me, the all-knowing, all-caring, all-sensing, all-feeling, all-concerned, Maha Rushi.
It's Friday, so let's go.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's Open Line Friday.
You know the drill.
Open Line Friday.
When we go to the phones, the program is all yours.
You can talk about whatever you want.
That's not the case Monday through Thursday.
We only talk about things that interest me on Thursday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, because I don't want to be bored.
But on Friday, I'll run the risk.
Bo Snerdley, official screener of calls, standing by even as we speak.
800-282-2882.
Squawk on the street this morning.
CNBC co-host the street sweetie, Aaron Burnett, interviewing Lawrence Geller, the president and CEO of Strategic Hotels and Resorts.
And the street sweetie said, you own some of those hotels where you get those conferences or you used to in lovely, warm locations, whether it's Arizona, Mexico, Southern California.
Has that business dried up?
The hyperbole and rhetoric was notched up to gigantic levels during this recent political debate season.
The bookings of meetings have cut down drastically.
We've lost an awful lot of major businesses.
And it's now it's not just those receiving government bailouts that are affected, but there's a general fear of criticism by people not only making the bookings, but people attending these conferences.
So it's really got out of hand because the meetings and conference business is absolutely essential to this nation.
We lost 200,000 jobs last year.
We thought if things went the same way, we'd lose 240 odd thousand this year.
Since the hyperbole got ratcheted up to these levels, we're on track to lose 350,000, 400,000 jobs.
The ripple effect through the economy is gigantic.
Lodging is, and tourism is the third largest retail business in the country.
Now, I know what some of you people are thinking.
Well, Rush, you know, who goes to these conferences?
It's rich and the semi-rich and the people that can take time out to go to Vegas or Mexico's Florida, wherever they're going, these five-star resorts.
Yeah, like the United Auto Workers and the AFL-CIO.
But here's the thing.
And I'm going to say this until I'm blue in the face.
The people that do these meetings are stopping because they are afraid of criticism from the President of the United States.
The President of the United States personally is shutting down a large part of the travel and leisure industry in this country purely on the basis of class envy.
But who is really getting hurt?
Aside from the hotel owners, who works at hotels?
Who works in the travel and leisure business?
It's the very little guy, quote unquote, that the Obama administration claims to stand for.
The very little guy, if there are no guests arriving, if there are no conferences being held, if there's no food being prepared and consumed, if there are no hotel rooms being occupied, then there's no work for the maids and there's no work for the kitchen personnel.
There's no work for any of the staff in the hotel.
But we all get caught up here in the notion, well, these people, they shouldn't be partying in a recession.
Really, it's bad form.
They shouldn't have people.
See, I think it's just the opposite.
I think it's inspirational.
I think it can be motivational.
Now, this is where my critics are going to say, well, I can't believe how to touch Rush is.
Out of touch, if that's what people would say, out of touch.
What we need, what needs to happen in this country is examples of economic activity flourishing, like Daniel Henninger wrote about in the Wall Street Journal.
We need to see evidence of the idea of a thriving free market, of a thriving capitalist market.
Instead, we see just the exact opposite.
And while all this is happening, Obama's out there saying he cares about health care, so his approval numbers are going up, while he and he alone, well, he's getting some help from Barney Frank and John Kerry, but the Democrat Party, let's say, are personally assaulting the travel and leisure business, except when they are engaging in the travel and leisure or their big supporters, the AFL-CIO, are engaging.
So the street sweetie then said, well, Mr. Geller, you believe that this is something coming out of the White House?
Is it bipartisan in Capitol Hill?
Who are the people that are pointing the fingers at your industry?
If you listen to the committee hearings, I think it's unfortunate.
It's almost the Lemming factor.
One starts and then the other has to show they're more strident and stringent.
And as you go around the committee, I don't know whether it's bipartisan or not.
I can't say it's the White House or Congress.
All I can say is the pernicious effect is pretty devastating.
It's almost, a colleague of mine was complaining this week, it's almost McCarthyism directed against the hotel and travel industry.
This is so silly because it's the lubrication of business is these big meetings, these small meetings, convention communication, and the fear factor has got out of control, the fear of being criticized.
Exactly.
Not just the fear of being criticized, the fear of being targeted, Mr. Geller.
Not just the fear of being criticized, it's the fear of being targeted by a government official, be it Senator Kerry, be it Congressman Frank, or be it the President of the United States is out there saying, you're not going to go to Las Vegas.
Yeah, you're not going to plan any park corporate jets here.
What is going on?
So it has a rippling negative effect throughout the economy.
Coming up sometime this month in Charlotte, North Carolina, there's a golf tournament.
A major PGA tour event.
It's always been known as the Wachovia Open or Wachovia, whatever they call it.
Wachovia, the bank.
Well, as you know, Wachovia was purchased by Wells Fargo.
They're going to do the tournament.
They're going to spend the, they're going to reduce the amount of it.
The way golf tournaments work is that the sponsor, in this case, Wachovia, would put up all the prize money and other costs.
The PGA would do their thing.
Charity would get some of the proceeds from ticket sales and all of this.
And it was a win-win for everybody.
What's happened now is that the Wells Fargo CEO has said, well, we'll put $3 million into this this year, but we're not going to put our name on it.
Since there is no Wachovia, there can't be a Wachovia Open.
We're not going to call it the Wells Fargo Open.
So I don't know what they're going to call this thing.
The Charlotte Open?
They may call it that.
I have no idea.
Haven't kept up that much with it.
All I know is that Wells Fargo doesn't want their name on this because of what happened to Northern Trust with the LA Open, which used to be the Nissan Open, but Nissan pulled out.
The PGA Tour is always running around trying to find new sponsors for things because that's where the prize money comes from.
That's who pays the pros when they win or finish in the money in these tournaments.
But now these people are even afraid to put that.
I'm sure they're going to reduce the partying.
And what goes on at these things anyway?
You know, a friend of mine, an acquaintance of mine is the former, a former chairman of ATT.
You know, ATT sponsors what used to be the old Crosby as the ATT celebrity pro-am out at Pebble Beach.
And I once asked this guy, what do you really get out of this?
I don't know what it costs you, but I mean, do you, because it says the Pebble Beach AT ⁇ T, do you have a bunch of people signing up for ANTT services from the public?
Well, how does this work?
He said, you know, this is, you're looking at it the wrong way.
Our marketing budget every year is hundreds of millions.
This thing costs us 20.
This is where we entertain our customers.
This is where we thank them.
This is where we appreciate them for being part of what we do.
This is where we wine and dine our best customers.
We're not so much using this to generate new, although we do, but this is, it's normal business.
Now that's not even going on.
People are afraid to even thank their best customers.
And believe me, he told me the total marketing budget for AT ⁇ T when he was there, and the 20 million, maybe 15, the percentage of that whole marketing budget spent in that golf tournament is zilch.
It's infinitesimal.
But it's where they thank everybody, and they let people come out and hobnob with the pros.
Pebble Beach is a beautiful place to go.
It's a week-long tournament.
All these services are out there.
It's a great time for people to go.
But now that's under assault, thanking your customers, trying to keep your customers, trying to grow your customer base.
That's what Mr. Geller's talking about.
That's why a lot of these things take place.
But today, we're being told it's just a bunch of Roman excess.
It's just a bunch of irresponsible people coming out there and having a giant party at a five-star place while the rest of the country's starving and can't find a house and can't find a job and all this sort of thing.
It's just an all-out assault on capitalism.
There is an all-out assault on free markets.
But because Obama says he cares about healthcare, his approval numbers skyrocket right up while the private sector crumbles bit by bit in front of our eyes.
Back after this, my friends, sit tight.
We'll be right back.
President Obama, ladies and gentlemen, approval ratings are going to skyrocket.
President Obama announced today that he had saving jobs.
He went, yes, he's saving jobs.
Is yours one of them?
No.
But he's saving jobs.
He went out to Ohio today, a very important battleground state, in his permanent campaign mode called President of the United States.
And here's a portion of his remarks to the Columbus police graduation ceremony.
There were those who argued that our recovery plan was unwise and unnecessary.
They opposed the very notion that government has a role in ending the cycle of job loss.
All right.
Stop this and queue it back to top.
Here comes, once again, this strawman strawdog technique of his.
There were those who argued our recovery plan was unwise and unnecessary.
They opposed the very notion that government has a role in ending the cycle.
No.
Who are these people?
Whoever said government has no role?
Government has a clear role, and that's rolling back its involvement.
It's going to take government action to make it smaller, Mr. President.
See, he strikes, he uses these straw men, makes up people who he doesn't name, who apparently have positions they don't have.
And that keeps his voters all jimmed up.
Yeah, yeah, there people want me hurt.
People don't want us to get jobs.
People don't want, no, Obama's going to take care of us.
That's how this all works.
All right.
Here the whole thing is again from the top.
There were those who argued that our recovery plan was unwise and unnecessary.
They opposed the very notion that government has a role in ending the cycle of job loss at the heart of this recession.
There are those who believe that all we can do is repeat the very same policies that led us here in the first place.
But I also know that this country has never responded to a crisis by sitting on the sidelines and hoping for the best.
Nobody's saying that I know that throughout our history, we have met every great challenge with bold action and big ideas.
Exactly, just not these.
And nobody's saying sit on the sidelines.
Except maybe some weird-looking libertarians.
Nobody is out there saying don't do anything.
You know who's sitting on the sidelines?
You want to know who's sitting on the side?
The investors, the people that would grow a job and hire you.
That's who's sitting on the sidelines.
This is not a market to put your money in and hope it grows because it ain't through falling yet.
Sorry, isn't through falling yet.
Here's the big finale where the president regales the audience at the Columbus Police Graduation with all the jobs that his stimulus plan has saved.
For those who still doubt the wisdom of our recovery plan, I ask them to talk to the teachers who are still able to teach our children because we passed this plan.
I asked them to talk to the nurses who are still able to care for our sick and the firefighters and first responders who are still able to keep our communities safe.
I asked them to come to Ohio and meet the 25 men and women who will soon be protecting the streets of Columbus because we passed this plan.
25 jobs saved in Columbus, Ohio because of the stimulus bill.
One caveat, for those of you in Columbus, Ohio, the police jobs are not funded past one year under the Obama plan.
So next year, those 25 jobs will be gone if the city doesn't have the money to continue their employment.
And when there's no PR value in these new 25 jobs, there's 25 jobs being saved.
The funding is just for one year, just like unemployment benefits are just for one year, but they totally changed the law.
This is like the 100,000 cops that never were.
This is just to provide Obama the PR effort.
And so if there's no more PR value remaining in these 25, they're gone.
They're gone.
Specifically, as I say articulately, specifically, if Columbus doesn't have the ability to continue their employment on its own.
So 25 jobs saved by the stimulus plan.
Hallelujah.
We are out of trouble.
Let's go back to the phones.
Monica in Charlotte, North Carolina, where the Wachovia Open used to be.
I grew up in Sweden.
I spent the first 22 years in Sweden.
I've been living here for 30 years.
Sweden tried to do the same thing, trying to tax the upper income.
And as a result of that, they left.
I lived there when Bjornborg and the pop group ABBA was there.
They all left.
So who gets stuck with paying the bill?
It's the middle class people of Sweden.
So we get stuck paying the bill because nobody else could do it.
And as a result of that, we have always had an sales tax of 26% because there's no other way.
If you can't tax the person anymore, you have to go after everything else.
I'm well aware of the Swedish example, the Swedish experiment with ABBA pulling out of there.
Oh, yeah.
And then you had, like you said, Bjorn Borg pull out of there.
And a number of others.
Well, even you, too, pulled out of Ireland and the UK.
I mean, there's no way.
All these great philanthropists.
Yeah, it's but see here how long did it take for that to show itself or to reveal itself for the people who lived in Sweden remaining to pay the taxes?
Once they raised tax everybody and they started doing an Atlas shrugged on Sweden, how long did it take before the people who were remaining to pay taxes to Sweden realized they got screwed?
Well, it didn't take long.
And as a result of that, we had privatized medicine or people coming, doctors are coming, we would have to pay our own money to get health care.
How cruel is that?
I know.
Oh, cruel.
People had to pay their own money to get.
And on top of that, we had to pay our taxes to pay for the nationalized health care.
So we paid on top of that.
Then, if we want to have our own private doctor, we have to pay privately for that.
So that's why I'm not so afraid.
I think the American people will never put up with this.
And once they find out that we all are going to get stuck with the bill, everybody in the United States.
I think you're right about that, Monica.
I really do.
What worries me is how long it's going to take them to realize it?
There'll be a lot of suffering before they figure it out.
It's going to be a lot of Bjorn Borgs and ABBAs leaving the United States and leaving the freight to be paid by the so-called beneficiaries of all of this.
I want to forego the suffering.
This is not necessary.
It is not a fix.
It's something entirely different.
And if it's going to take Obama voters four or eight years to figure this out, that's going to be a lot of pain, a lot of economic decline, and a lot of ground to make up down the road.
Springfield, Ohio.
Hi, Jeff.
You're up next on Open Line Friday.
Hi.
Rush, it's an honor.
Hey, listen, your discussion about the damage to the travel and leisure, you're exactly right.
I'll tell you something else.
It actually started way back with the signing of Sarbanes-Oxley.
Oh, yeah.
I'm not kidding you.
You know, we would have a major event where our customers, for exactly what you're talking about, to say thank you for your business, your loyalty, whatever.
And we'd fly them down on those company jets to a golf, a PGA event, and we'd put them up there for a couple nights, take them to the tournament.
We could not give away badges to publicly traded large companies.
They would have to, if they wanted to come, they'd have to take a vacation day, which nobody did.
They'd have to pay for their lodging.
They'd have to fly.
They wouldn't fly on our jet.
They'd have to fly on a regular airline.
It was ridiculous.
We would bring customers to our manufacturing facilities or our corporate headquarters, you know, to see how the products are made and what they're buying to meet our executives.
And they would literally want us to invoice for any food and any expenses.
I know, I know that's all because of Sarbanes-Oxley, which what gave us Sarbanes-Oxley?
Do you remember, Mr. Snoodle?
That's right.
Enron gave us Sarbanes-Oxley.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, are Enron times 100, if not more.
That's a great call, Jeff, in Springfield, Ohio.
Thanks much, and we'll be back.
Stay with us.
It's Open Line Friday.
We take a lot more calls on Friday, and we let you decide what to talk about.
So we go to the phones on Friday.
The programming content show is all yours.
800-282-2882 and the email address, illrushbow at EIBNet.com.
Okay, let's see.
We had a trillion-dollar stimulus package.
Barack Obama in Columbus, Ohio today proclaimed, by the way, and he said this very dynamically.
We have lost and is down 4.4 million jobs.
Like he's happy about it.
He sounded triumphant.
And then he announced he saved 25 jobs, but nobody knows it's just for one year in Columbus, Ohio.
I figure at a trillion dollars, 25 jobs divided into trillion dollars means we spent $40 billion per job.
$40 billion per job.
It's worth, I know it's worth it, those people, for a year.
They will eat for a year.
They will work for a year.
And when there's no longer any PR value left, these 25 police officers are going to be sent to the Russian front, you know, or wherever.
Sharon, oh, you got to hear this soundbite.
Barney Plank invoke my name on the floor of the house.
It was last night on the House floor and Barney Frank talking about foreclosures and me.
There is, for instance, a noted commentator on public affairs, Mr. Limbaugh, who has a certain number of fans on that side.
And if they aren't fans, they're afraid to say so.
He has asked that the president fail.
Well, the effect of this amendment was to give Mr. Limbaugh his wish.
Because if you cripple the effort to reduce mortgage foreclosure, you cripple the effort to get out of the economic slump we are in.
So I understand what some people would like to see happen.
They do not want President Obama and a Democratic Congress to get any credit for helping to reduce our economic situation.
They're taking a lot of innocent people hostage.
Well, that's the most convoluted way of looking at this that I can imagine.
He's talking about the amendment that would allow people who cheated on their initial documents to still be able to get a crammed down reduction on their interest rate.
So he's this amendment would allow people who cheated and who lied on their loan application to still get a cram down, meaning a judge could reduce the cost of their mortgage payment.
This is what Barney was going for.
And of course, he brings me up as the enemy of all this.
You want to play that?
Yeah, I do want to play it again because there's a great post here by a Yale economic professor about all of this.
Now, it was tough sledding for me, the way this is written, to understand it.
And involves the concept that they're really not helping anybody by reducing their interest payments.
That the only way to really help people here that are underwater is to reduce the principal.
But the principle is not being touched, which means that at some point responsible people are going to default anyway because all they're doing is renting.
They're going to have no equity even if their payment lowers.
I'll get to that in just a moment.
Here again, Barney Frank, once again, advocating an amendment to allow people who cheated on their initial application for a mortgage to still get a cram down.
There is, for instance, a noted commentator on public affairs, Mr. Limbaugh, who has a certain number of fans on that side.
And if they aren't fans, they're afraid to say so.
He has asked that the president fail.
Well, the effect of this amendment would to give Mr. Limbaugh his wish.
Because if you cripple the effort to reduce mortgage foreclosure, you cripple the effort to get out of the economic slump we are in.
So I understand what some people would like to see happen.
They do not want President Obama and a Democratic Congress to get any credit for helping to reduce our economic situation.
They're taking a lot of innocent people hostage.
Congressman Frank, you're a smart guy.
Everybody admits it, but this is a little, you're perverting here everybody's intention.
What we're upset about is why should the people who are paying their mortgages subsidize those who aren't paying?
Why should we pay for people to stay in their houses when they lied on their loan applications?
This is the root of the Tea Party stuff.
This is, you know, Barney's definition of affordable housing is you can't afford it.
It's yours.
This is what I mean.
It's time to take the wealth of this nation and return it to its quote-unquote rightful owners.
Now, here's the piece here by Yale economic professor John Giannakopoulos.
Yeah, grab Banking Queen.
Mike, that's a good point.
We'll throw Banking Queen.
We'll play this onbite one more time after this, and we'll play Banking Queen.
This is, excuse me, folks.
I may be coming down with something here.
Yale economic professor and also a law professor, Susan Kogiak.
The plan announced for the White House will not stop foreclosures because it concentrates on reducing interest payments, not reducing principal for those who owe more than their homes are worth, the people whose houses are underwater.
The plan wastes taxpayer money and it won't fix the problem.
Why is writing down principal, which the Obama plan rejects, so critical to stopping foreclosures?
Well, despite all the job losses and economic uncertainty, almost all owners with real equity in their homes are finding a way to pay off the loans.
It is those underwater on their mortgages with homes worth less than their loans who are defaulting, but who, given equity in their homes, will find a way to pay.
They are not evil or irresponsible.
They're actually defaulting because for anybody with an already compromised credit rating, it's the economically prudent thing to do.
And Obama's plan does nothing to change the basic economic calculation that a hard-pressed family and millions of others like it must make.
The Obama strategy, which involves reducing their interest rate for five years and giving them at most $5,000 for principal reduction over five years, will still leave them paying much more than the $10,000 it would cost to rent.
So if you don't reduce the principal of these underwater homes, you're not adjusting the value to change the status that makes them underwater.
If all you're doing is reducing the interest so as to make it the payment smaller, you're not changing the relationship of the homeowner to his house.
There's no equity.
He's underwater.
So he's renting, and he can rent far cheaper than getting a little rate reduction from a cramdown or a judge or whatever in the Obama plan.
So they're not, Barney, they're not even, these people are not going to be able to stay in their homes in the first place, the ones underwater, and those are the ones that are actually cared about the least, as this policy indicates.
Once again, here's Barney Frank from the floor of the House.
And I'm playing this a third time because I just love it when he pronounces my name.
There is, for instance, a noted commentator on public affairs, Mr. Limbaugh, who has a certain number of fans on that side.
And if they aren't fans, they're afraid to say so.
He has asked that the president fail.
Well, the effect of this amendment would to give Mr. Limbaugh his wish.
Because if you cripple the effort to reduce mortgage foreclosure, you cripple the effort to get out of the economic slump we are in.
So I understand what some people would like to see happen.
They do not want President Obama and a Democratic Congress to get any credit for helping to reduce our economic situation.
They're taking a lot of innocent people hostage.
The estimable and honorable Barney Frank, Massachusetts, is indeed the banking queen.
Barney, I want you to fail too.
In fact, if Barney had failed, wouldn't even be here.
I actually don't know how Barney Frank and Chris Dodd sleep at night.
I mean, honestly, folks, I, you know, Barney, I want you to fail at what you're doing now.
In fact, if Barney Frank had failed a few years ago, this housing and financial crisis would not have happened.
But instead, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd succeeded.
We are all suffering as a result of this.
Your cover-up for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, your cover-up for both of those things succeeded, Barney.
What are you whining about?
You got everything you want.
You got people who can't afford to pay homes in homes.
And now you found a way to make people who can't afford their own home to pay for everybody else who can't stay in their homes.
You ought to be happy.
What are you running around denigrating things for?
You guys are having all kinds of success at causing failure for the rest of us.
Back in a second.
Back to the phones on Open Line Friday.
Rush Limbaugh to Great Falls, Virginia.
This is Sharon.
And it's nice to have you here, Sharon.
Hello.
Just outside the Beltway Gittos, Rush.
Thank you very much.
I think everybody should be hoping Obama is going to fail because it looks to me like he is intent on bringing on the second Great Depression.
Why do you say that?
Why in the world would you think that the president of the United States wants the second Great Depression?
Well, last time we had a Great Depression, it resulted in a generation of Democrat power.
And this time, it looks like he's doing the exact same thing that happened last time.
That is, they're taking a garden variety, downturn in the economy, and by responding to it with some populist measures that are really economically ill-advised, they'll turn it into a huge downturn.
Yeah, but there's a difference here between FDR and Obama that I need to point out.
What's that?
And that is that, and I may be wrong about this.
Now, somebody may have to historically correct me on this.
It's been a long week.
I am fighting fatigue here.
But it seems to me that Obama is doing much more to create and cause economic collapse than FDR did.
Oh, yes.
I think FDR certainly took advantage of what he inherited.
But I could be wrong.
My point is, I think that what Obama's doing is a little bit more hideous than FDR.
And I think there's more to it than just maintaining as much Democrat control over power as possible.
Well, I think it's definitely intentional.
some of the things that are being done to drive market instability and uncertainty couldn't be anything but intentional.
It's just impossible.
That's a very serious charge you're making out there about the President of the United States, Sharon.
Very, very, very serious charge you're making.
Yes, and in very dangerous territory, living as close as I do to Washington, D.C.
Yeah, I understand.
I'm a real interested student of the Depression, and I've read a huge number of books on it, and I've done a lot of thinking about it.
And it seems to me that when you take a regular downturn and then you begin by targeting all the wealthiest people and telling them you're going to raise their taxes and that they've taken unfair advantage, and you try to paralyze them to parallelize.
Wait a second.
You only publicly target the wealthy.
You're actually targeting everybody.
I mean, the wealthy haven't really been hurt that.
I mean, everybody has, but, you know, the old saw, the wealthier you are, the more operating capital you have left, even if you lose half your operation.
People have lost their jobs here.
I mean, which is always the case.
Liberalism hurts the very intended people it says they're going to help, the little guy.
And this is the dirty little secret.
The way that, though Obama speaks, though, like you just said, he's out there targeting the rich people.
That's what his voters think.
His voters think he's targeting the rich people while giving them health care, targeting the rich while giving them new education, targeting the rich while making sure McDonald's has chicken McNuggets when you show up in Port St. Lucie to order them.
So they think he cares.
They think he's doing all these things while targeting the rich.
And this has been a standard operating procedure for a long time, is to succeed with Shadden and Freuda to make these voters of Obama's happy when their lives don't change.
In fact, when they get worse, their lives get worse, but they're supposed to be happy because the rich somehow are getting shafted at the same time.
How many of you people out there, Twitter, the White House has invited the co-founder and the CEO of Twitter, a guy named Ev Williams, to the White House today to join in a discussion of young business leaders, a young business leader's summit to discuss the economic crises.
Ev Williams has 6 million members.
Twitter has 6 million members, a 700% plus growth rate.
They make no money in the United States.
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