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April 9, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:25
April 9, 2009, Thursday, Hour #3
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Time Text
Going ahead with this third hour, folks, is a triumph of emotion over common sense.
All indications, I'll just shut it down and play a tape of a best of hour.
But we're going to plod on.
Great to have you here, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network, and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
The telephone number, if you want to be with us today, 800-282-2882.
And the email address, lrushbo at EIBNet.com.
They're going to get rid of Columbus Day at Brown University.
It's gone.
They're still going to celebrate it.
They're just not going to call it that.
They're going to call it Fall Weekend.
Fall weekend will be taking the place of Columbus Day at Brown University.
The faculty of the Ivy League University voted at a meeting Tuesday to establish a new academic and administrative holiday in October called Fall Weekend.
Coincides with Columbus Day, but doesn't bear the name of the Explorer.
Hundreds of Brown students had asked the Providence, Rhode Island Scruel to stop observing Columbus Day because Christopher Columbus's violent treatment of Native Americans was inconsistent with the values at Brown University.
Reiko Koyama, a sophomore who led the effort, told a student newspaper, the Brown Daily Herald, I'm very pleased.
It's been a long time coming.
The change will take effect this fall, although the students had asked the scruple to take another day off instead.
Brown will remain closed on Columbus Day in part to avoid inconveniencing staff whose children might have the holiday off.
Many other colleges are open on Columbus Day, but give students short breaks later in the semester.
Last month, a Brown Daily Herald poll found two-thirds of these spoiled, rotten little skulls full of mush with brains that represent the arid expanse of the Sahara Desert supported changing the holiday's name to Fall Weekend.
Because Columbus...
That's right, Mithril and Boy, you were three...
You don't want to admit it, but the multiculturalists have been right all along.
This is because Columbus brought thipoleth.
Columbus brought racism, sexism, homophobia, environmental destruction.
It's just, it's just.
I know it's funny.
I know it's funny, but it's sad to realize this level of idiocy is being rewarded.
Next, they're going to come along and get rid of Halloween.
The administration is going to buckle.
All right.
All right.
We'll just call it Old Folks Day.
It's what happens when they all smile at an old folks home.
We're just not going to call it Halloween anymore.
For those of you going to the tea parties on Tax Day, you've heard about the efforts, the rumored efforts of Acorn and other community organizer efforts to infiltrate trying to be and appear as one of you, but then cause problems, create violence, create shows for the drive-by media cameras, so that the Tea Party protests can be portrayed as a bunch of fringe kook violent wackos.
In addition to that, this is from thepolitico.com.
In addition to that, various Acorn groups like America United for Change are going to hold dozens of events outside local post offices in at least 30 states to highlight Obama's plan to help restore fairness to the tax code.
In fact, ACORN, on the same day you're out there at the tea parties, ACORN and other groups, unions and so forth, are going to be calling for tax increases in 30 states.
One of the taxes that they're going to zero in on is what they call the outrageous loophole that allows offshore corporate tax havens as called for within the president's budget.
Hey, don't worry about those.
They're going away.
The world regulator from the G20 is going to see to it that takes place.
We've talked about the Boston Globe, Boston Globe owned to the New York Times.
Losing $85 million.
New York Times says we're going to shut it down unless we get $20 million of concessions from the unions.
Boston Globe employees reacted with a mix of resignation and anger yesterday on learning of the pay and benefit cuts and lost job security that the New York Times wants them to accept as the price of keeping the Globe in business.
Members of the Boston Newspaper Guild, hearing the company's proposals for the first time, said they accepted the need for cuts, but they were shocked at how much the company was asking.
And they said that the company had refused to provide details of the Globe's finances.
Leaders of the Guild, which represent more than 700 employees, the largest labor group at the Globe, first heard the proposals Tuesday, called a membership meeting on Wednesday night.
Daniel Totten, the union's president, said the company's demands are outrageous.
Now, we're willing to consider some concessions, but not the draconian amount they put forth.
The Guild is one of 13 unions being asked to make concessions.
The other 12 unions are being asked for give backs.
That would account for 10 million of the 20 that the Times says the Globe has to give back.
The company, the New York Times company, also demanded, now get this, this is just New York Times company demanded greater freedom in future layoffs.
Management at the New York Times company, running the Boston Globe, wants the power to dismiss employees without regard to seniority.
They want the power to abolish the lifetime job guarantees held by 430 Globe employees, including about 170 in the Guild since the early 1990s.
Employees learned last Friday that the company had given the unions an ultimatum.
Agreed to the concessions, or the company will either sell a paper or shut it down.
And of course, the unions is outrageous.
They want to get rid of my lifetime job guarantee.
They want to get rid of my life.
How dare they?
Lifetime job guarantee.
Now, aside from the sheer ridiculousness of the whole concept of a lifetime job guarantee, now wait, I better stop myself.
I keep have to remind myself we live in a different country.
And I realize when I say something like that, a lot of people, what do you mean it's ridiculous about a lifetime job guarantee, Rush?
That's only fair.
It's only fair as much as the CEOs give themselves in their retirement pay.
We ought to have a lifetime job guarantee.
What do you mean it's ridiculous?
I'm sorry, you're right.
I forget that most people understand how markets work and the output, productivity, and the relationship of that to what you're in.
I keep forgetting that people don't understand that anymore.
I keep forgetting only 53% of the American people believe in capitalism, and most of them are over 40.
So I'm sure that a lifetime job guarantees to people, that's what a company's in business for.
What do you mean nobody expects a lifetime job anymore?
These people do.
They think that they are guaranteed a lifetime job.
Well, you don't tell me that nobody expects a lifetime job anymore.
Those days have been over.
Did you ever expect a lifetime job?
What do you mean those days have been?
When did people in this country, Snerdley, ever expect a lifetime job?
50s?
When was this?
In the 50s?
So you went to work for Acme Corporation.
You started out in the mail room.
And after 40 years, you got up to maybe be a vice president with a company car, and then you retired with a gold watch.
And people had that expectation.
Well, maybe it's just because I've been in the broadcast business and the talent performance business.
I have never in my life assumed that a job is guaranteed for life.
Snerdley is saying most people don't think a job is.
Well, maybe they don't, but they must think that should be.
That's, I'm telling, I sit here and I laugh and laugh at these people upset that their lifetime job guarantee is gone.
I'm sure that that sounds insensitive to millions of Americans who think that a lifetime job guarantee is just part and parcel of what you're entitled to as an American.
I think the only lifetime job guarantee that exists in this country is if you're with the government.
Now, excluding elective government.
I mean, that's not guaranteed.
You can stack the deck with the power of your incumbency to cede it to it, but it's not guaranteed.
But if you get hired, I mean, it's a job for life.
One that you know you're never going to be laid off.
Your whole bureaucracy could go belly up and they'll still pay you.
If you have the sleigh ride concession at Jellystone Park, government shuts down, you still get paid.
And they'll still give you the Thanksgiving turkey, the Christmas turkey.
Let's see, do we have time to squeeze one more in here before we have to go to the timeout?
Oh, they're tracking pirates.
It's in the situation room.
Obama's tracking the pirates.
Jim Jones is actually tracking the pirates.
Obama's not.
Obama's out, ladies and gentlemen, selling the refinancing of your house.
Listen to this.
This morning in Washington at the White House, this is the same press conference where a reporter said, What about the Somali pirates?
What about the Somali pirates?
We're not talking about housing today, guys, okay?
Where he declined to answer questions.
This is the same meeting.
And here is what the teleprompter told him to say about housing and refinancing.
There are seven to nine million people across the country who right now could be taking advantage of lower mortgage rates.
We estimate that the average family can get anywhere from $1,600 to $2,000 a year in savings by taking advantage of these various mortgage programs that have been put in place.
Don't forget to go to makinghomeaffordable.gov.
Makinghomeaffordable.gov.
And the way the website is designed, you can plug in your information and immediately find out whether or not you are potentially eligible for one of these mortgage refinancings.
Folks, folks, folks, don't fall for this.
It was just this week we had the story about people that accessed the first of these programs, and a lot of these people had their payments go up.
A lot of their payments went down so minimally they didn't notice it.
It's not what happens, and it's not what he says.
It's how he says it.
So now there's a website, makinghomeaffordable.gov.
Obama's going to make your house affordable.
And try, this is attempt number two.
We just hand the story.
It didn't work the first time.
Now you can go there and you can plug in your information, immediately find out whether or not you're potentially eligible for one of these, eligible for one of these mortgage refinancings.
I'm there.
I'll go to this website.
I'm going to go in there.
So I got a mortgage of $15 million.
I've got a down payment of $5 million.
My banker's screwing me around.
Can I get help from you?
Just to see what the, I wonder if it'll take.
I wonder if the fields in there will take like a $15 million mortgage.
Now, I'm going to add, I'm sure there's a note for comments.
And by the way, I hate the fact I can't deduct all of my interest on the mortgage like people who only make $100,000 can.
It's not fair, government.
And see if I get some fairness.
Now, here's Obama warning all of you people who are going to go to makinghome affordable.gov.
Don't be fooled by cheap imitations.
I just want everybody who's watching today to know that if somebody's asking you for money up front before they help you with your refinancing, it's probably a scam.
So take advantage of makinghomeaffordable.gov, and that will allow you to figure out exactly how to proceed on this in a way that's making you money, saving you money, as opposed to costing you money.
Making you money?
What is it?
Makinghome affordable.gov.
Go in there and plug in your pathetic figures.
Listen to the administration's website.
Tell you whether you qualify.
But don't go out there and if anybody demands money up front.
That's right.
The government demands money all the time at the end from the front, from the rear, from the down, from the up.
What do we got?
We got scammers out there.
Obama's admitting that there are scam artists in America now that he's president and are going to take advantage of the people.
Don't be fooled.
So he realizes he's got competition.
He's in competition with the loan sharks, ladies.
Dredgy got this headline up there that had the master's leaderboard up there.
Let's see.
California considers ban on big screen TVs.
This is not new.
California considers ban on big screen TVs is a story that's been around a long time.
Started out with plasmas.
Plasmas use way too much power.
I don't know.
I can't get into the story because everybody's the servers shut down.
But if it's gone beyond plasmas now, then it's new.
But this is not new.
Also, economists in the latest Wall Street Journal forecasting survey expect the recession to end in September, although most say it won't be until the second half of 2010 that the economy recovers enough to bring down unemployment.
So the recession is going to end sometime in September, but it'll be a year after that before employment starts ticking up.
This, according to experts, from the Wall Street Journal.
Here's something else that's really not news.
It's being dandied about big New York Times story.
In fact, standby, let's play audio soundbite 14.
It's a show you this.
Obama to push immigration bill despite the risks.
That's the headline.
Amnesty's back.
Whoo, big news.
No, it's not.
February 28th, this program, I made this prediction.
I think everybody ought to just brace yourselves.
I know some people don't think this is a big issue to people, and it may be one of these issues that subsides and then regains prominence and energy.
But make no mistake, both parties are very eager to have open borders.
And at some point, somehow, some way, if the right leaders in both parties happen to ascend to the right positions of power, they're going to try for it again.
And if they can't do it in one big bite, they'll do it incrementally.
It's something that's not going to go away.
It's something both parties at high levels actually want.
February 28th, 2008, I made that prediction right here behind this, the golden EIB microphone.
So here comes the New York Times.
Obama to push immigration bill despite the risks.
Big whoop.
It's not a surprise to anybody.
Shouldn't be a surprise.
I'm sorry.
You know, May is Amnesty Month.
We may as well call May Amnesty Month because Obama plans to speak publicly about the immigration issue in May.
And over the summer, he's going to convene the now famous working groups, including lawmakers from both parties and a range of immigration groups to begin discussing possible legislation for as early as this fall.
But for those of you worried about this, the Obama administration wants you to be comforted by a fact as reported in today's New York Times, and it is this.
Obama administration officials said that Obama's plan would not add new workers to the American workforce.
They're already here.
All it would do would recognize millions of illegal immigrants who've already been working here.
Despite the deep recession, there is no evidence of any wholesale exodus of illegal immigrant workers, independent studies of census data show.
So by recognizing that they violated the law and imposing fines and other penalties to fit the offense, we can wipe out their illegality and we can move on with this because we're a humanitarian country.
Now we believe in family.
They're already working, so it isn't going to be a big hassle here.
Let's go back.
And it's Rush Limbaugh here on the cutting edge of societal evolution.
Having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
Yes, I actually do mean it today.
Wouldn't say it otherwise.
Okay, we have a junior from the University of Tennessee, the Tennessee Volves.
This is Jordan on the phone.
Hi, Jordan.
Great to have you here.
Hello.
Hello, Rush.
It's an honor to speak with you.
Thank you very much, sir.
I just have a quick question.
I am in a macroeconomics class, my minor is economics, and my professor drones on and on and on about the Supply-side economics and how it does not work, and constantly in my test and even an essay, we had to talk about why supply-side economics does not work and why it's not fair to the poor and why it is increases income inequality.
And I just want to know the truth, I guess.
I just tired of this.
Okay, so the first place it does work, and it works every time it's tried, and it's brilliant, very simple to understand and explain.
But your professor, just want to understand this: your professor said it doesn't work.
It doesn't work, and it never has worked.
And it never has worked, because it's not fair to the poor, and it increases income inequality.
Yes, sir.
What does he say trickle-down or supply-side economics is?
Does he define it for you in the class?
Yes, lower personal income tax rates, reduce taxes on income from savings, reduced taxes on capital gains, reduced from corporate income tax is how he defines it.
Well, those are the results of a belief in supply-side economics.
Supply-side economics is simply capitalism.
Now, let me give you some numbers.
In 1980, 1981, Ronald Reagan took office.
And the top marginal, are you recording this?
Yes, sir.
Okay.
Top marginal tax rate.
Ronald Reagan took office.
Top marginal tax rate was 70%.
There were a bunch of different tax rates.
Has he adequately explained to you what a marginal tax rate is?
Not really.
Okay, well, let me explain because that's central to understanding this, is understanding what a marginal tax rate is.
In 1980, I'm guessing here, but there were 13 or 14 tax brackets.
So if you made, and these are arbitrary, I'm making these up.
I don't have the actual tables in front of me, but the way it worked is the first $10,000 you made, you paid 10%.
The next $10,000, up to $25,000 a year, you paid $15,000, you paid maybe 15%, and on and on and on and on, until the top marginal rate, until you'd earned over, let's say, $150,000 a year, every dollar over $150,000 was taxed at 70%.
Okay?
Did you follow that?
Yes, sir.
Okay, because this is, and it was called bracket creep back then.
As you earned more, you end up in a higher tax bracket.
And it's the marginal dollars, the last dollars you earn.
And the last dollars you earn are the dollars that define your wealth or define your income.
So when Reagan took office, the top marginal rate was 70%.
Now, very few paid it, Jordan, because there were all kinds of tax loopholes that were built into the system back then.
Not loopholes, but there were incentives to invest in this area of the economy if you put your money here and that you would pace, you would not be taxed on that money.
But still, we had a top marginal rate of 70%, and the total take in tax revenue to the government in 1981 was about $500, $480 billion.
Okay.
Now, in 1989, when Reagan left office, the top marginal tax rate had been reduced from 70 to 28%.
The take to the Treasury almost doubled.
It was $950 billion.
So reducing marginal tax rates from 70% to 28% doubled.
Now, how did this happen?
Because it created more taxpayers.
It created more jobs.
And by reducing the top marginal rate on people, if you tell people you're going to keep 28, you're going to keep 72 cents every dollar you earn, you're going to go out and earn dollars.
And you're not going to worry about sheltering them or hiding them.
You'll report your income.
You don't look for places to hide it.
At 70%, you look for places to hide your income.
So at a top marginal rate of 28%, more people were hired because small businesses, subchapter S corporations, most of them file their income tax on a personal form as they're allowed by law.
And so they were able to hire more people.
Corporations of all kinds were able to hire more people.
Capital gains tax caped down.
The corporate tax caped down.
This meant that there was more money in the private sector and not at government.
The supply side simply means leaving the money of creativity and productivity in the hands of the people who produce and create.
The citizens.
It's their money.
They earn it.
Now, the reason that your professor says it doesn't work income inequality is because we're all different.
And some people don't want to work as hard as others.
You are finding yourself in a macroeconomics class, but many at your school are majoring in PE.
They think it's going to be easier.
They'll get a degree in that.
They're not going to go the hard route.
You have an interest in economics.
Some people don't.
Some people have an interest in being rocket scientists and going to the moon or Mars.
Other people are content to get to 7-Eleven.
Okay?
We're all different, Jordan.
And in a capitalistic society, he calls it supply side.
Your professor, I hate to say this, but your professor is a walking liberal cliché who doesn't understand economics.
And if he does understand it, he's threatened by the concept of individual freedom and liberty and is trying to mold you students into people who are going to conform so that you agree with the concept that nobody should earn anything more than anybody else, that there should not be any poor people.
Absolutely.
That the only way that we can guarantee that kind of equality is to make everybody miserable.
He went to Princeton.
Princeton, Brown.
I don't care.
He could have gone to the University of the North Pole, and I'm sure the curriculum there is the same thing.
But it's just capitalism.
Now, let me give you some figures.
It just came out today.
The federal government announced, the IRS announced today that last year they took in, just in the income tax, they took in around $500 billion, $560 billion.
This year, the federal government's going to take in 25% less, $450 billion.
Why do you think that is, Jordan?
You're the student, I'm the teacher.
We've raised tax rates now from the 28.
We're back up to 35.
Soon we're going to be back to 39.6 federal.
We have a federal deficit with these numbers today.
This year's federal deficit guaranteed to be $2 trillion, not the $1.2, not the $1.7, we're going to have a $2 trillion federal deficit.
Now, why is it that April 15th is going to be a down day for the government?
Their collection and income tax revenue is going to be down 25%.
Why?
Crowding out, possibly.
I know it's okay to have a budget deficit when you're in a recession.
So isn't that okay?
No.
Is that good?
No, but no, no, forget.
That's another concept altogether.
That's Keynesian.
And that means in a have you've been told about John Maynard Keynes?
Yes, sir.
Yeah, just spend money you don't have to stimulate an economy.
It never works.
It's never ever worked.
It prolonged the Great Depression.
This is sad.
That's what we're learning.
You are paying nothing to call me and learn the truth.
And how much are your parents paying to send you to this worthless class?
At any rate, the government is going to collect $150 billion less in tax revenue because of unemployment.
There are fewer people working.
There are fewer people paying taxes.
Why is that?
Because we are in a recession.
The government is borrowing so much money and printing so much money and yet taxing people at increasing levels that there's not the money in the supply side sector in the private sector.
Government's got all the money.
Government's deciding who's going to get it, like the banks and the auto companies and how they have to spend it.
There's less money in the private sector for people to be hired.
And if you're not working, you don't pay taxes.
That's how you explain $500, $450 billion in tax revenue in 1981, doubling in eight years by reducing tax rates from 70 to 28%.
The Bush tax cuts after 9-11 is what kept this country in economic boom because any, look, it's very simple.
If you're a capitalist and if you believe in the concept of individual liberty and freedom, then you have to accept the notion that what you earn is yours and that you are entitled to earn as much as you desire following rules, of course.
And that there is nothing immoral about earning more than somebody else.
Just like there's nothing immoral about you becoming an economics graduate and somebody else going to a junior college.
You made the choice.
That other person made the choice.
Why should that person who decided to go to a community college, come out, be votech, and learn how to use a scratch all?
Why should that person make as much as you who are investing whatever you're going to invest in college, be an economist, and perhaps go somewhere and you why should you two make the same?
And who's right and whose authority determines what either of you should make?
That's what your professor wants some central planner to decide.
That you're no better than somebody with a scratch all.
And if you that works with a scratch all and if you, in terms of your value, I'm not talking about your morality or as a person.
I'm talking about your value economically.
You know, your value is, you look at athletes.
I bet your professor thinks athletes are overpaid.
He probably doesn't think movie stars are overpaid because they're libs, but he probably thinks athletes are overpaid.
And he probably thinks that the school gets, you know, they've been the rules too many times to let the football team not go to class all the time.
Right?
What's the value?
What's the value of a professional?
Alex Rodriguez gets $270 million over 10 years, whatever it is, because somebody's determined he's worth it.
Okay?
Now, your professor probably blanches at that notion.
While Alex Rodriguez is making $270, some pauper playing for the Kansas City Royals is only making $2 million.
Only $2 million.
That's got to be grossly unfair.
How can Rodriguez get $270 and some pauper shortstop for the Royals only get $2 million?
Oh, the injustice of it all.
What a rotten country.
Supply-side economics is not just tax cuts.
Tax cuts are the result of a principle.
And the principle is that we are individuals and that we have freedom to compete, to invest in ourselves, to become whatever we want.
We can become slackers.
We can become wealthy.
We can become accomplished.
We can become semi-accomplished.
It's up to us.
No two people are the same.
Now, he's saying the supply side doesn't work because he's looking at the various inequalities throughout, not just income, but other inequalities.
And he looks, he says, it's just unfair.
It's just unfair.
And then he also couples this, I'm sure, he hasn't added to the rich or a bunch of SOBs, just in general principles.
They're mean, rotten cheaters, thieves, and liars.
Of course, rich Democrats are not.
They're like Ted Kennedy.
The whole Kennedy family.
All they have to do is get up, and they're billionaires.
Never had to work a day in their lives.
They just get up.
But that's wonderful because they talk about the things your professor talks about.
But you don't see Ted Kennedy walking neighborhoods giving money away unless he's taken it from somebody else first.
So, or any other liberal, I implore you, Jordan, my man, to investigate independently the economist Friedrich von Hayek, H-A-Y-E-K, University of Chicago.
He's long dead.
I urge you.
Does your professor ever talk to you about Milton Friedman?
No, sir.
He does?
No, no, no.
No, he doesn't.
I'm not sure.
Milton Friedman, there's a videotape DVD series that Milton Friedman did that explains everything you want to know here in a classical economic sense.
He's written many books, brilliant.
Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, who is at the Hoover Institution on the campus of Stanford.
But read Friedrich von Hayek, read The Constitution of Liberty, and read The Road to Serfdom.
They're tough reads.
I mean, these are intellectual treatises, but you will not be disappointed.
Thank you so much, Rush.
I appreciate that.
You bet.
Hang in there because the country depends on people like you being open to the concept of individual liberty and what that results in.
Absolutely.
Thanks, Jordan.
All the best to you.
Thanks, sir.
Go Valls.
And we'll be back.
Okay, we have time to squeeze one more call in here at the Limboy Institute for Advanced Conservative Stories Studies.
Joe in Pulaski, Virginia.
Nice to have you, sir.
Hello.
Hello, Rush.
Thank you so much for taking my call.
Yes, sir.
Rush, I've got to take exception.
I love you, man, but I've got to take exception with you on your opinion of the unions for this particular reason.
We were not all born with a multi-million dollar talent, nor were we born with a multi-million dollar entrepreneurial spirit.
However, there's millions of us who were born with the desire and the drive for hard work.
And Rush, you've got to admit there is corporate greed just as there is union misconduct on both sides of the fence.
You know, Joe, could we get your number?
Because I'm not going to have time to spend as much time as I would like discussing this with you before we have to go to.
Could I get your number, call you back tomorrow?
Sure.
Okay, and we'll pick this up.
You'll be the first call tomorrow.
Tomorrow's Friday, right?
So you'll be the first called Open Line Friday.
We'll get to you real quick.
We won't call you until we're ready, but I promise.
But I want to say I have not been critical of unions per se.
I'm critical of union leadership and their political motivations for what they do.
I understand.
See, I have this belief that the vast majority of people, all being equal, everything being equal, the vast majority of people are capable of far more than they think they are.
But look at the situation in the NFL.
Well, but I only got a few seconds, and you can respond to this tomorrow.
And I'm a huge individualist.
I'm not a conformist.
When you join a union, you're giving away your individuality.
Your merit is not relevant in what you earn.
It's just not for me.
And I think if you're going to join the union, you should understand this.
I understand the need for them.
But the political power that union leadership has amassed is something that needs to be addressed.
And I think they do beat down the members.
Anyway, we'll talk about this some more because it's a great call.
I really mean this.
I can't wait to finish this.
Here's a good supply side, demand side question to ponder.
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