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May 19, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:40
May 19, 2009, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24 7 Podcast.
Once again, greetings to you, music lovers, thrill seekers, and conversationalists all across the Brian, go ahead and leave it that way.
You're not going to be able to fix it.
We got a computer monitor problem here.
I'll be able to weed my way through it.
We can deal with it after the pro.
I know you're going to have to get a new monitor.
It's a piece of junk.
Works with a windows format.
It's a piece of junk.
We'll have to get it replaced later.
Don't sweat it.
Anyway, where was I?
Oh, yes, greetings and welcome.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network and the Limbaugh Institute.
For advanced conservative studies, great to have you here, folks.
The fastest three hours in media.
Telephone number, if you want to be on the program, is 800 282-2882.
The email address L Rushball at EIBNet.com.
Drudge had as a lead item up there this morning on his page a story from uh the UK Sky News scientists unveil a missing link in uh evolution.
It's all about how Darwin would be thrilled to be alive today.
Scientists have unveiled a 47 million year old fossilized skeleton of a monkey, hailed as the missing link in human evolution.
It's a one foot nine inch tall monkey.
And uh it's it's the it's a lemur monkey described as the eighth wonder of the world.
The search for a direct connection between human beings and the rest of the animal kingdom has taken 200 years, but it was presented to the world today.
So I guess this is settled science.
So we've would now officially came from a monkey 47 million years ago.
Well, that's how it's being presented here, settled science.
Uh I I, you know, I this is all BS as far as I'm concerned.
Uh cross species evolution.
I don't think anybody's ever proven that.
Now they're trying now that this is going out of their way here to establish evolution as uh as a as a mechanism for creation, which of course can't do that.
But I'm more interested in some other missing link.
And that is the missing link between our failing economy and prosperity.
How many thousands or millions of years will it be before somebody makes the connection to our failing economy and prosperity, Barack Obama?
If we're looking for missing links, let's look for him.
Because right now he's getting no blame, no coverage whatsoever as as being instrumental in the drop in American prosperity as the decline in all elements of the American economy.
It is his economy.
Uh nobody wants to connect it to him yet.
It's not just Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reed as well.
It's one of these things.
The economy's gonna go to hell in a handbasket further, and we wonder how long it'll take for the missing link to that to be discovered outside of this program, the missing link there being Barack Obama.
In California today, voters are gonna go to the polls to decide the fate of six ballot initiatives.
Four of them will or would, if they pass, raise taxes on Californians.
The governor is not there.
The governor is in Washington along with Jennifer Granholm to celebrate the announcement by Obama today of these new auto emissions rules.
They're gonna add about well, if they're gonna say sixteen hundred dollars uh to the cost of the American family, double it at least by the time we get to 2016.
Schwarzenegger has pushed heavily for all six ballot measures.
They are designed to uh close California's $15 billion budget shortfall.
But as the Heritage Foundation points out, there's a great story called Californication.
Even though the governor's legacy depends on the passage of these six ballot initiatives, he's not gonna be there tonight to see the results.
His absence, according to the LA Times, in the face of widely forecast defeat, drew mockery from his foes.
Instead, Schwarzenegger is in Washington, scheduled to join Obama at the White House to celebrate the federal adoption of auto emission standards that mirror standards previously adopted in California.
Now, this is being called a win for California.
The Heritage Foundation's well, actually LA Times here is saying that the governor succeeding in getting California emissions adopted for the nation is a big win for California.
Well, that may be, folks, but it is a huge loss for the rest of the nation.
And it may just be the first of many losses for the rest of the nation.
Heritage Foundation points out today that for decades California's been a leader in public policy innovation.
Now stick with me on this because this is, I mean, this is where the rubber meets the road here.
A generation ago, 25, 30 years ago, California was at the forefront of a taxpayer revolt that eventually helped elect President Reagan and usher in three decades of prosperity.
California is still exporting its public policy ideas.
So how is California's experiment with a green economy going?
Do you know what the LA Times just no?
I think it's Channel 5 in LA, the Fox affiliate in Channel 5, has discovered LA's called the greenest city in the country.
And they have discovered that the street lights are on 24-7.
The street lights are on in the daytime.
And customers and citizens have been complaining about this waste, and the city hasn't been doing anything about it.
They've been looking to uh uh blame the contractor or blame the uh the some Department of Public Works or some such thing.
But it's even better than that.
California, the greenest, well, LA the greenest city in the country, California, with all of these great auto emission standards.
California imports more energy than any state in the country.
And when you drive through that state, you're going to see solar panels everywhere, and you will see windmills everywhere.
You are going to see cars on the highways everywhere.
You're going to see traffic everywhere as you know it, and yet California imports more energy than any state in the country.
As a result of that, it has some of the highest energy costs in the country, including the second highest commercial sector energy prices.
Only Hawaii, which is ocean bound, has higher rates.
Now, in addition to all the greening that's gone on in California, resulting in the largest amount of energy imports in the country.
California's unemployment rate hit 9.3% last December.
That was up from 4.9% in December 2006.
There are now one and a half million Californians out of work.
The state has the fourth highest housing foreclosure rate in the nation.
California has lost more businesses than any state in recent years.
California is facing a 40 billion dollar budget deficit.
In some small towns, unemployment now running close to 35% rivaling unemployment rates during the Great Depression.
And what is the benefit to the environment of all of this?
Absolutely zilch zero nada.
All of this economic pain, supposedly for environmental gain, has resulted in zero environmental gain.
This is the exact same formula that the Waxman Markey energy tax legislation offers the United States.
Cap and trade.
It is the exact same thing this nation is headed for.
It has been a disaster for California.
It will be a disaster for the nation at large and as a whole.
But you know how insistent Californians have been.
They've got their own fuel emission standards.
They have their own fuel mixtures and blends.
California imports more energy than any state in the country.
Now you might say, well, yeah, but Russia, the more population.
Well, they're also the greenest.
They have embarked on policies to reduce the need to import.
What is the whole what is the whole uh impetus behind Obama's cap and trade program to reduce our dependence on foreign oil to make us less susceptible to people who hate us?
And the energy and what's California showing us?
That's a microcosm of what is ahead for the United States of America.
They import more energy than any state in the country.
Unemployment through the roof, Budget deficits through the roof.
Six ballot initiatives today, four of which would raise taxes.
The governor out of town doesn't want to be anywhere near there when the results come in tonight.
The polls indicate that these things are going to go down in flames.
That despite all, Californians don't want to pay higher taxes, even the uh the majority Lib population out there, because they're starting to say it's not our fault.
It's not our fault.
The fact that we're not paying enough taxes is not the reason why you people in Sacramento can't control your spending.
So all of these liberal do good ideas, all of these feel-good things, all of these proposals and ideas that are going to make California the beacon of the country and show us the way on energy independence have all failed miserably.
And Schwarzenegger is in Washington today to join Obama in in in spreading the same kind of energy policy nationwide that California has adopted for years, and this is being called in the LA Times a big win for California.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Brief timeout.
We'll be back.
Stay with us.
President Obama's new fuel and emission standards for cars and trucks.
This is AP now, and this is not me, so don't confuse this.
President Obama's new fuel and emission standards for cars and trucks will save billions of barrels of oil, but are expected to cost consumers an extra thirteen hundred dollars per car by the time the plan is complete in 2016.
Obama today is going to make this announcement, he's doing it right now, always in the middle of this program.
Is going to announce the first ever national emissions limits for vehicles, as well as require an overall or industry uh average fuel efficiency standard at 35 and a half miles per gallon.
Carol Browner, the White House Energy and Climate Director, publicly confirmed the new initiative in appearance on the morning news network shows.
We have soundbites of that coming up in just a second.
Global warming, if you look at any poll of the American public on the issues that matter most to them, global warming is at the bottom.
Global warming is at the bottom of climate change, whatever you want to call it, at the bottom of issues that most Americans consider urgent and important.
And yet we're going to do this.
We're going to wreck the U.S. economy in the in the process.
$1,300 per vehicle, add double that, make it $2,600 per vehicle by the time the plan is complete in uh in in 2016.
I played golf.
I told you over the uh yesterday, played golf over the weekend.
And now, admittedly, I'm mostly I run around with people who are sympatical with me.
Uh I run around with people who think and uh and live life the same way I do, think about issues and all that.
I actually had a guy who's a little older than I am over the weekend say to me, we were talking about all of these economic changes and all of the destruction and all of the things that are happening to the banks and the automobile industry, uh Obama with his fuel standards and so forth and the the general wrecking ball that has been taken to capitalism here by the Obama administration.
That guy actually said to me, and he we I thought he was joking at first, but he wasn't.
He said he's actually happy he's going to die before all of this crap finally settles in.
Actually said he's glad he's reaching life expectancy before because he doesn't want to live with this kind of misery, doesn't want to have everything he's lived for taken away from him.
He doesn't want to lose this kind of freedom, and he doesn't think there's anything he can do about it.
In the uh remaining years that he had used, well, I don't share your attitude about that.
If I did, I'd retire and I'd go ahead and try to have as much fun as I as I could until I hit the life expectancy.
But it is it is incredible these things that that that that are that are happening here.
Let's go to the audio soundbites.
Carol Browner was on Good Morning America today, for example.
Diane Sawyer was not happy.
She's happy about the new fuel standards, but she still thinks energy is gonna be too cheap, and she wants uh uh Browner and Obama to raise taxes.
Here's the first of four sound bites.
The question she had is this if you want to reduce dependence on foreign oil, none by 2015 or 2016, but right now, there's one way to do it.
It's the way Europe's been doing it, and that's a gasoline tax.
Well, what we're doing is we're using the laws on the books today, which allow us to set fuel efficiency standards, and we're setting the first ever greenhouse gas pollution standards.
And what this means is we're going to be able to reduce our dependence on oil by 1.8 billion barrels over the life of the program.
Life of 1.8 billion barrels between women now.
Now and when?
Well, what what's the life of the program?
They're 2016.
1.8 billion barrels?
Anyone want to bet we don't reduce our import of oil by 1.8 billion barrels?
And even if we do, so what?
There is no global warming.
There's no man-made global warming.
All we're doing is reducing our lifestyle.
All we're doing is rolling back the advancements in life and living standards that capitalism has made in this country from the get go.
All we're doing is rolling back a standard of living that is the envy of the world, and all of it under the guise of saving the planet or whatever.
And that's not why it's being done.
Why it's being done is not to save the planet.
That's just what they're saying.
That's what Obama's saying right now.
They always, this is great cause, this great reason to do all this.
But the real reason, when you look at people who are power hungry and who also happen to be liberals, it's a combination of limiting your freedom and limiting the ability of you to have and drive the car you want to drive and being able to raise taxes and the cost of living that you have to spend with most of the money going to Washington for these people to use to control ever more of the private sector in this country.
It's a devious plan, but that's what this is, all dressed up as somehow avoiding the evil of importing oil.
We don't need to raise gasoline taxes, Diane.
We don't need to drive around in little buggies in order to save oil.
All we've got to do is drill our own.
If we want to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, then we go get our own.
We've got tons of it.
The environmentalist black holes won't let us do this because of so-called damage that'll happen, but that's not the real reason even for not doing it.
The real reason is they don't want us to be dependent.
This is like I said yesterday, a double speak news speak.
We're trying to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
It's just the opposite.
We're trying the American people more dependent on government.
We're going to transfer our dependency from so-called foreign oil to Washington, D.C. That's what this is all about.
Now, Diane Sawyer's next question was this.
Do you think the gas tax approach is right or wrong or just politically unacceptable?
I think what we're doing today is right.
I think uh putting these standards, uh, proposing these standards, uh moving forward, working with car companies, uh, working in partnership is what we need to be doing.
Uh she's avoiding the question of raising the gas tax.
If that's gonna happen too.
There isn't a tax out there that's not gonna go up.
San Francisco is gonna raise taxes on a pack of cigarette 33 cents or 33 percent, whatever, on the basis that smokers pollute the city by throwing their butts on the ground.
It's a cigarette butt tax that they're planning out in California with an additional tax on cigarettes out there, but based on the fact they pollute.
So the gas tax is going to go up at some point.
Every tax is gonna go up because they don't have the money that they're spending to do any of this.
The Sawyer, though, kept begging Carol Browner to raise our gas taxes and make us more like Europe.
They had this exchange.
So no gas tax ever, as far as you're concerned?
We're doing what we think is right today, which is setting fuel efficiency greenhouse gas standards.
We work obviously within the laws on the books.
Uh you know, this this push from a member of the media to raise gasoline taxes in Carroll Burr.
We work within uh the laws on the books.
And that's code too.
That that that is designed for you to not be suspicious.
This is so that you do not realize that they're working outside the laws on the books and that they are resting control of as much of the private sector as they can, working with the automobile companies before it's all said and done, they're gonna own the automobile companies.
There is no working with them.
As you will hear in just a moment, Neil Cavuto had a great interview with a Dodger Chrysler dealer yesterday at the uh at the Fox Business Channel.
If you want to hear how this administration is working with the auto companies, wait till you hear that.
Uh Sawyer still won't give up, though.
Final exchange on raising the gas tax with Carol Browner.
I'm asking one more time here.
If a gas tax reduces dependence on foreign oil and changes the foreign political dependency immediately, why not be for it right now?
Well, what the president is uh announcing today, these proposed national standards will achieve the greatest reduction in oil use uh that we've seen in in in a very, very long time.
1.8 billion barrels of oil will uh be reduced over the life of the program.
Now, Carol Browner is not somebody who's ever been afraid of a tax increase.
You know, she was part of Clinton EPA, she'd been brought back now to be part of the Obama EPA.
Why do you think she's so steadfastly opposing talking about a tax increase?
A gasoline tax increase.
Because they want to get this done first.
That's exactly right, H.R. They want to get this done first so that when this gets done, it can't be undone.
They want to get these new standards in of 35 and a half miles a gallon per car and additional cost to you.
You think you're gonna be saving money driving a small car, right?
You need to be saving money on gasoline and all these other things.
Wait till they find out how much tax revenue they lose at the States with you buying less gasoline when you're driving around a little putt putting that gets 35 and a half miles a game.
Guess what tax is gonna go up?
Gasoline tax.
But they don't want to kill this right now by suggesting that a gas tax is going to happen after this on top of because they want everybody buying into this.
They want the blind sheep that make up the support for Obama to buy into this under the uh under the umbrella of the good works and the goodwill, limiting our dependence on those evil Arabs and those oil kingdoms and making ourselves independent of all these evil things and have them in our clutches.
Back in a second.
Matt Spivy today, writing at the American thinker.com and a piece called Obama at Notre Dame has a great line in here.
As Obama still making his announcement with all of his acolytes standing behind him smiling and looking proud as they can be, as they said about the destruction of the U.S. economy as we have known it.
Only in a liberal's mind would saving the planet carry more value than saving a life.
All of this is being done on the basis under the auspices.
And we have to save the planet.
We've got to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
Yada yada yada yada yada.
So you gotta save the planet.
We gotta move fast.
Only in a liberal's perverted mind.
I added the word perverted, would uh saving the planet carry more value than saving a life.
Now, yesterday, uh, ladies and gentlemen shared with you, I think it was yesterday.
Might have been last week.
No, it was yesterday.
We had a story on how ethanol finally the jigs up here on ethanol, everybody knows that it's ruining automobile engines, it's costing more to make uh than it produces.
What?
What are you shaking your head about?
Well, I really didn't.
I didn't, I didn't get a whole lot of pro ethanol emails last night.
I I was kind of surprised, but I did not get a lot of grief.
Uh it's not cleaner.
None of it.
I mean, the whole, the whole, the whole hoax is finally come through.
Now listen to this soundbite, though.
This is last night on CNBC.
This is just funny.
The the the show called CNBC Reports.
And the host of the show, Dennis Neal, spoke with Alexander Leo of the Huffington Post.
It's amazing where you can go to get qualified experts these days, isn't it?
Spoke to the Huffington Post's Alexandria uh Alexandra Leo about an ethanol company filing for bankruptcy, and the host here, Dennis Neal says, now today the units of Pacific ethanol filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, triumph of science over politics.
Alexander, why don't you kick us off here?
Ethanol is the rush limbaugh of energy products.
It makes a ton of headlines, but it's completely useless for everyone.
I mean, frankly, this thing is so inefficient it costs more energy to make it than it produces in the long run.
The market's fixed this problem and it's gone out of business and it's taking huge, huge hits.
And that's exactly what should have happened.
You people realize how much I am hated or envied, resented, despised.
I mean they make they use me to make my own point.
I was the forerunner making this point.
I have been out there for months.
And I have been taking grief from audience members in Iowa over trying to get the truth out about ethanol.
And finally, the left has to admit it they use me and the point I've made to make their point while claiming I'm useless.
Well, now let's go to I guess it's funny.
I think these people are and uh something about me renders these people insane and irrational.
And I, you know, I wish I knew what it was.
Actually, I don't wish I knew what it was, because then I would try to do what I'm obviously doing naturally, and I want it to continue.
All right, now, Obama, Carol Browner, this uh this benevolent administration wants to work with the auto companies, right?
Last night, Neil Cavuto interviewed uh Jim Anderer.
He is a Chrysler dealer who's being shut down.
Cavuto said Long Island, New York Chrysler dealer Jim Anderer says that they're shutting him down, even though his dealership's making them a lot of money.
They shouldn't be shutting you down, Jim.
What did they say in their letter to you?
They won't give us a solid explanation.
They come up with all these reasons, but none of them seem to make sense.
Well, what were the reasons?
Well, they'll say they want to uh combine all the stores, or they say that the dealers cost the manufacturer money to keep in business.
And all of these might be true in some cases, but in the dealers that they cut, there seems to be no uh cohesive way that they did it.
There was no process that you could put your finger on and say, hey, we cut 25% of the lowest performing dealers.
They didn't do that.
Okay?
Nobody will give us a real clear explanational formula that they came up with.
Now, why do you think that might be?
I mean, I could only hazard a guess here.
Do you think that the Obama administration working with Chrysler, working with the automobile manufacturers, working with the dealers?
Do you think they're just randomly taking a look at a list, eh?
We don't need this one on Long Island, chop it, we don't need to have one in Portland, chop it.
We don't need to have one in San Antonio chop it.
You think they're doing that, or do you think maybe?
I just throw this out there as a possibility.
Do you think maybe Obama and his administration are targeting dealerships happen to be run and owned by Republicans?
I don't know this.
I'm being led to speculate because Mr. Anderer says he doesn't know why his high performing dealership was shut down, and he can't find a formula.
He can't find a coherent plan to explain why they're shutting down successful dealerships in the Chrysler network.
Well, you joke about it being about penalizing success, but what the hell?
That would be the theme of this administration.
We're going to penalize success.
By the way, coming up later in the program, the deal details are this.
How many of you are paying your home mortgage on time and have been have learned that you are also going to be subsidizing people who shouldn't have gotten a mortgage in the first place?
All right, Snerdley raises his hand.
How many of you pay your credit card bills on time?
How many of you pay them off every 30 days?
Guess what?
You're going to be penalized.
People who pay off their credit cards in 30 days, there's a series of things that are going to happen to you.
You know, you get a lot of perks and a lot of uh points and frequent flyer miles and maybe cash back privileges and so forth.
All that or a lot of that is going to be eliminated.
In addition, they're going to start charging you interest from the day you make the purchase rather than 25 or 30 days after you make the purchase.
You know why this is being done?
I just said that even for those of you who pay off your credit cards in 30 days to escape any interest or finance charges.
Some of these companies are going to start charging, I don't know the names of which ones yet, but some of these finance companies and banks that run credit cards are going to start charging interest on your purchase from the day you make the purchase, not give you a three-week or four-week grace period before they start the finance charges.
Now, do you know why they're doing this?
They're doing this to help you subsidize the people that don't pay.
The people that run late, the people that don't pay their bills on time.
And it's going to lower their interest rates.
Now you think that we joke when we say this is an attack on achievers?
That this administration is targeting the achievers.
You pay your mortgage on time, you're going to subsidize those who shouldn't have been given one in the first place.
You pay your credit cards off on time, even if if you if you pay them off on time with the minimum payment, you're still going to have additional payments attached so that the people who are delinquent have an easier time of it.
This is a theme of this administration.
This is this is just another way of redistributing wealth.
And this is a way that is uh is hidden, and I doubt that too many people are going to find out about it until the practice is implemented and you start getting your bills.
We have some more soundbites here with Jim Anderett, a Chrysler dealer out on Long Island.
Uh Cavuto said, Well, look, uh, you you think they have it out for you personally, Jim?
If you can't figure out why they're shutting you down.
No, no, no.
But I think there is a lot of favorite dealers, there's uh there's some collusion.
Do you know unequivocally of dealers who are pathetic, who are not getting it done, who've been saved?
Yes.
Can you name them?
Yes, I uh I don't want to do that because you know a lot of these guys are friends of mine.
But you know, the numbers are there.
The numbers reveal that.
Okay, right on Long Island, there's some guys who really shouldn't be there.
But I'm not gonna reveal their names.
So Cavuto says, okay, so this doesn't work for you, right?
You're done.
This is insanity.
The government is stealing my business.
Well, I cannot accept that as a patriotic American.
I was raised in this country to to believe that if I work hard and I achieve what I was going after, and I did, I did it, I I got it.
And now all of a sudden, because you know, we have a president who pushes Chrysler into bankruptcy and puts all of these UAW workers out.
Didn't have to.
Maybe some of them had to go out, but not all of them.
Okay?
This doesn't happen in America.
This is still America, I think.
I mean, this is not Stalinist Russia.
This is not Nazi Germany, where the troopers say you're out and their buddies are in.
That's what I'm faced with.
The Chrysler dealer, folks, Jim Andrew and Long Island, comparing what's happening to him to Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany.
He believed in the American dream.
He went for it, he got it.
Now they want to take it away from him.
And this is why more and more people think they're not safe.
That if the government targets them and their wealth, the things that they have achieved, then they're gonna have it taken away from them.
Under under some auspices of goodwill for everybody else.
Now this this is this is just one segment here, but this is this is the Chrysler dealers.
And this, I know of a dealer out in Portland that the same thing has happened to them.
Uh leading dealer, they're being shut down, and they're being left to eat the inventory that they have on their lot.
Furthermore, the dealer in Portland was told some months ago, please take additional inventory from the factory.
You're gonna be okay, we'll back you up.
They did it, and they're saddled now with inventory that they're not gonna be able to sell.
It's gonna wipe them out financially.
All brought to you by the Obama administration.
We'll be back.
Much more straight ahead.
Stay with us.
Okay, to the phones we go.
Again, the number's 800-282-2882.
Rush Limbaugh talent on loan from God, Liberty Township, Ohio.
This is Adelaide.
Nice to have you on the program.
Hi.
Hello, Rush.
I was just calling to say that Europe uses nuclear power.
So if we were actually trying for energy independence, we wouldn't be uh going for the wind or the solar.
We'd do uh if we are trying to follow what Europe does, we'd be using nuclear power.
Well, especially uh uh especially it's a good point about France.
France is uh big into nuclear power, but you raised a good point here, Adalie.
There is a way to reduce our dependence on foreign oil tremendously, and there's a way to reduce the use of coal.
And that's nuclear.
Oh no, we can't have nuclear.
Why?
Because nuclear, well, nuclear, well, we'll all melt.
We'll have we'll have a radiation, we'll die of radiation poisoning.
We know that because of a movie called the China Syndrome, in which Jane Fonda starred.
That movie killed the nuclear industry, and it was done on purpose.
But there's an added reason why we don't go nuclear.
And I want to take you back to my example.
Obama is gonna have its all driving putt-puts that get 35 and a half to 39 miles a gallon by 2016.
Purpose?
Use less oil, use less gasoline.
This is to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
We don't like those shakes in the oil producing states of the Middle East.
And we don't like being vulnerable.
So we're gonna, we're we're gonna we're gonna go drive a little putt putts.
And at the same time we do this, guess what we're gonna do?
We are going to save the planet from whatever this hoax climate change is.
But then understand something.
When we're all driving these putt putts and spending or using less gasoline, that is going to equal less sales tax revenue, gas tax revenue, both to the feds and to the states.
Anytime you use less of a product, the tax take from it is less.
So one of two things is going to happen.
They're either going to have to raise taxes, which is the next step to come, raise taxes on gasoline.
Folks, this is the point.
It is not that anybody at that press conference today, from Obama to Carol Brown or anybody else, they don't care about being dependent on foreign oil.
There are ways that are much more efficient and make much more sense than 35 or 39 miles to the gallon in a putt putt to reduce our use of foreign oil.
They want the use of oil to continue.
They just want the money for it.
They don't want the sheiks getting the money, and they don't want foreign oil companies getting the money.
Obama wants it.
Washington wants the money.
And this is the first step, the universal or a national fuel efficiency standard, is the first step toward them shifting the expenditure of dollars for oil to overseas to Washington.
One way or the other.
Another thing that's going to happen here is that we're not going to use less oil.
If we do, then you're going to see an appropriate contraction and decline in your standard of living and in the overall national economy.
You do not grow an economy by making things more expensive for average people to utilize.
You do not grow an economy by raising the cost of living and by tamping down the standard of living.
You don't do that.
What you do is you encourage and facilitate the growth of government, which is going to be collecting all of the revenue that would normally be used as disposable income in your own family.
They're going to get it.
The states are going to get it, the federal government's going to get it, and you're going to have less of what you earn because you're going to be spending more of it.
Even though you're told today that you're going to have to drive a car to get 35 to 39 miles a gallon and voila, you're going to be using less gasoline.
Well, you think that's going to add up to a lot of savings.
You wait.
We've already seen the evidence.
In North Carolina, they had a drought.
So they reduced water usage.
Can't use what?
Did the same thing here?
Had a drought, got to economy, you can't owe your water once a week.
Then they found out, wait, wait a minute.
Our taxes from the water utility are going way down.
So they raised the rates, water prices, if you will, utility prices, after they in in North Carolina and Florida, after they enforced less usage.
Same thing's going to happen here.
In fact, it's already happened in California when people already started buying putt putts on their own and started using less gasoline, didn't take long for Sacramento to realize that their gas tax revenue was down.
So they started talking about how to raise taxes.
And in California today, after all of these brilliant massive economic improvements, after all of this cutting-edge econom or environmental improvements, all of these green ads, windmills, and solar panels, and uh new formulations of gasoline, California today.
What imports more energy than any state in the country?
And today there are six ballot initiatives, people going to the polls in California, and four of them are to raise taxes after all of these steps were taken to save the state, to save the planet, to save the country, to save on our environmental expenditures, and it just hasn't worked, has it?
And so what you're seeing in California today is a little microcosm of what's headed our way now, specifically since Obama and Carol Browner have announced this uh this silly nationwide cafe standard tailpipe emissions limit uh and mileage of 35.9 miles per gallon.
Now, I know some of you are saying, Rush.
What is what's wrong?
What's wrong with the cars that that pollute less and what's wrong with nothing.
There's not a thing in the world wrong with that.
But that's not what this is about, folks.
This is the whole none of what Obama says is his motive, is his motive.
His motive is designed to get you on board and in love with the idea of how much he cares about saving the planet, the country, and you.
This is all about increasing revenue to the states and the federal government while at the same time taking money away from you and having a little bit more control over what you do.
I mean, if you want to drive a putt-putt, you ought to be able to drive a putt-putt.
But if you don't want to drive a putt-putt, you shouldn't have to drive a putt-putt.
Now, once they make us all start driving putt-puts, then they're all going to make us you know you can't get the big TV you want to, whatever it is.
There are going to be limits on it because it's destroying the country or the planet, or it's somehow it's unfair to those who can't have it, you name it, there will be limits.
AP is reporting that uh Senate Democrats say that they're not going to pay for or fund the closing of Club Gitmo.
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