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May 25, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:23
May 25, 2010, Tuesday, Hour #2
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That is right, Johnny Donovan.
And for those of you just tuning in, you've missed the first hour, and in the first hour, I put many issues of controversy to rest.
And so we proceed with the second hour, and we're going to put other controversies to rest while Rush Limbaugh is resting himself on vacation.
Hey, I want to talk about Tom Soules, my colleague, very, very distinguished colleague and friend of mine.
He wrote a column called Enough Money.
And this is May 18th.
And he says, he starts off by saying, one of the many shallow statements that sound good, if you don't stop and think about it, is that, as Barack Obama recently said, at some point, you have enough money.
Now, that has to be stupid.
But for Americans to go along with this, it is incredible.
That is, that is, we have to recognize that politicians with the power to determine each citizen's income are no longer public servants.
What are they?
They're public masters.
And do we want public masters?
Tom doesn't ask this question, but I asked it.
Do we want public masters?
And Tom was pointing out in this column the moral bankruptcy of a notion that third parties can decide when someone else has enough money.
The moral bankruptcy of that is bad enough.
But the economic illiteracy compounds that problem.
Now, you tell me, for example, Bill Gates is the richest person in this country, if not on the face of this earth.
Now, the rest of our country, our country is not poorer because of Bill Gates' fortune.
Or a century ago, the nation was not poorer because of Rockefeller's fortune.
Now, I think that we're miseducated.
When, you know, for example, Ida Tarbell, she was a muckbreaker in her famous muckraking book.
It's called The History of Standard Oil Company, said that Rockefeller should have been, these are her words, should have been satisfied with the money he acquired by 1870.
In other words, Rockefeller should just not have made more money past 1870 because he should have been satisfied with the money that he made already.
Now, that is stupid.
And for people to accept it is stupid.
Why?
Because a lot of Rockefeller's contributions came after 1870.
That is, just one example that Tom Sowell points out, one example was oil was first shipped in barrels.
That's why we still measure it in the number of barrels today.
But Rockefeller shipped his oil in railroad tank cars.
And what did it do?
It reduced transportation costs and it reduced other kinds of costs, making oil more accessible to us.
And when Rockefeller got in and started marketing kerosene, what happened?
Kerosene prices fell.
Matter of fact, there's an interesting article in the Foundation of Economic Education.
Let's see.
It's called trying to get these pages open.
It's called How Capitalism Saved the Whales.
Anyway, in 1865, kerosene sold for 59 cents a gallon.
And in 1895, it sold $0.07 a gallon.
That's because of Rockefeller's ingenuity and his marketing.
Now, did he make Americans worse off by his activities that reduced the price of kerosene from what I'd say from 59 cents a gallon down to 7 cents a gallon?
Did I make Americans worse off?
But even a more important thing for you environmental wackos out there, Rockefeller saved the whales.
Because how did he come save the whales?
Well, people are using whale oil for lighting, for lamps.
And as we are growing economically, people are using more and more whale oil.
America had the largest whaling fleet.
And they're slaughtering whales for whale oil and other products as well.
But when kerosene came in and it became cheap, then people stopped using whale oil.
And so if it had not been for Rockefeller, we might not have had any of those cute little whales that the environmental wackos are so happy about.
Matter of fact, and Rockefeller ran into problems too, because along came who?
Along came whom?
Well, Thomas A. Ederson.
And he started marketing the incandescent light bulb.
And it virtually ran kerosene out of business.
Well, just the idea that Tom Sowell points out in his column, and I've added some things to it, that very idea that somebody can tell you how much, when you've made enough money.
I mean, that is dictatorial.
And we Americans just let that slide by.
But, you know, one of the things I'm a little more optimistic about my fellow Americans than I was because with the Democrat control of the House of Representatives,
of the Senate, and the White House, these people have become so brazen in the attack on personal liberty that finally Americans are beginning to pay attention to the United States Constitution.
You hear more and more Americans talking about the Constitution.
That's what you hear in the tea parties.
That's a lot of talk radio.
You hear conversations about the United States Constitution that I haven't heard in my entire life.
People are beginning to talk about the Constitution and the limits on the federal government.
And that is a hopeful sign.
But there's some other things that, and that many of you people in this audience, you support these things.
For example, I'm switching topics a little bit.
Down through the years, I've attempted to warn my fellow Americans about the tyrannical precedent and the template for further tyranny set by the anti-tobacco zealots.
You know, in the early part of the anti-tobacco campaign, there were calls for reasonable measures such as no smoking sections on airplanes, health warnings on cigarettes.
They were successful with that.
But in the 1970s, no one would have ever believed that such anti-tobacco measures would have evolved as they evolve today.
The level of attack on smokers, which includes confiscatory taxes, bans on outdoor smoking.
But see, here's what happened.
The door was opened.
That is, you told the federal government, you people who were in the anti-smoking movement, and you people who went along with it, you told the government that whenever it has to do anything, if anything has to do with our health, government has something to say about it.
Okay, so you set the template for government engagement in any area of health.
And so America's tyrants have now turned their attention to salt.
The FDA plans to limit the amount of salt allowed in processed foods for health reasons.
Now, you have to ask the question, why do food processors put a certain quantity of salt in their products?
The answer is people who buy their products like it.
And as a result, the companies earn profits from satisfying their customers.
Now, the FDA, and I believe the Obama administration, has taken the position that what the American buying public wants is irrelevant.
They know what's best.
And if you disagree, they'll fine, jail you, or put you out of business.
Now, as I pointed out many, many times on this show, that tyranny knows no bounds.
That is, there's never been a tyrant in history that woke up one morning and said, I'm tired of tyrannizing people.
I'm going to let people be free.
And so, here's what the FDA, here's the FDA's agenda.
Let's say the FDA orders Stouffers to no longer put 970 milligrams of sodium in their roasted turkey dinners.
They can only put in 400.
Suppose Stouffers' customers, assuming they continue to buy the product, suppose they add more salt.
Then what will the FDA do?
The answer is easy.
They'll copy the successful anti-tobacco zealot template.
They might start out with warning labels on salt.
Congress might levy confiscatory taxes on salt.
Maybe lawsuits will be brought against salt companies.
State and local agencies might deny child adoption rights to couples found using too much salt.
Or before a couple can adopt a baby, they might have to take a blood test to determine their dietary habits.
Teachers might ask school children to report their parents adding salt to their meals.
All this, you might say, well, Williams, that's incredible.
They never go that far in the name of health.
Well, in 1960, you might have said the same thing about the cigarette Nazis.
Oh, they won't go that far in the name of health.
We'll discuss some of these issues when we come back.
We're back, and it's Walter Williams trying to sell his fellow Americans on the moral superiority of liberty and its main ingredient, limited government.
Before we go to the phones, I'll just give you a quote by H.L. Mencken.
H.L. Mencken was a political satirist and he worked for the Baltimore Sun.
And he gave a description of health care professionals in his day.
And I think that his description of health care professionals in his day are appropriate for many of today's health care professionals.
And here's what H.L. Mencken said: A certain segment of medical opinion in late years has succumbed to the messianic delusion.
Its spokesmen are not content to deal with the patients who come to them for advice.
They conceive it to be their duty to force their advice upon everyone, including especially those who don't want it.
That duty is purely imaginary.
It's born of vanity, not a public spirit.
The impulse behind it is not altruism, but a mere yearning to run things.
That is to run other people's lives.
That's what we have in our country.
A desire to run other people's lives.
And we Americans, we Americans put up with it.
And I think Thomas Jefferson put it more simply, he put it simpler, in his notes on religion in 1776.
And he said, laws provide against injury from others, but not from ourselves.
That is the SALT Nazis.
They're trying to stop me from injuring myself.
Well, I belong to Walter Williams, and I can do what I want with Walter Williams, in my opinion.
Now, of course, if I belong to the United States Congress, then I just couldn't do what I want with my body because it's not mine.
Let's go to the phones and welcome from Spring Valley, New York, Joe.
Welcome to the show, Joe.
Yeah, this is Walter.
How are you doing?
Okay.
Yeah, I've spoken to Rush a few times in my conversation with him about Obama's mother-in-law example.
It's on Google with millions of hits.
And I just get a letter from President Obama himself.
He's saying he's going to implement my idea to create jobs.
And he found out, you know, like I spoke to Rush, and that's when I get a call back from the White House.
It's amazing.
Do you think Obama can create jobs?
Well, he's trying to, and this is what he said about the issue, you know, when you have made enough money.
What he's trying to say is there has to be some fairness.
And take the case in point of this guy, Bill Gates.
I mean, this is like what you call, refer to as greed on steroid.
Oh, come on.
He did achieve substantial stuff.
But what he did was he, in order to safeguard his assets, he started Bill and Melinda Gates Trust Fund because his reactions were predatory prior to that by taking Linux and his third.
That's incredible.
That's incredible.
Look, how did Bill Gates get?
Do you have any of his products?
No, of course I have.
I had Linux before and then it turned to Windows.
Okay, okay.
Okay, wait, wait a minute, wait a minute.
You purchased Windows.
Did somebody come with a gun?
Did Bill Gates come with a gun and say, plump down $400 for this Windows or I'm going to shoot you?
No, no, he didn't come with a gun.
Okay, now why'd you buy Windows?
Because like a gangster, he replaced Linux with Windows.
But you don't have to buy Windows.
No, because he put the other guy out of business.
I mean, you could have bought Apple, couldn't you?
Okay, so that's the point I'm trying to come to.
The point is, when he tried to say, why did he try to attempt to save God his asset by making Bill and Melinda get trust funds?
He gets $3 billion from the Treasury, and another $30 billion he saves from the lawsuits, and another $3 billion he makes, you know.
Okay, wait a minute, wait a minute.
Whose money is it?
It's our money.
That is incredible.
No, he made the money.
No, no, he didn't make the money.
He cynically manipulated the system, and then he made the money out of gangsterism, sheer gangsterism.
Oh, you mean he took a gun and made people buy his products?
I don't mean with a gun, but by bullying.
He combines.
Al Capone bullied people.
Did Bill Gates do things like Al Capone?
Okay, so this is what Microsoft is about.
Instead of 400,000 jobs which Microsoft can create without making a dent on his balance sheet, he creates only lousy 40,000 jobs, 20,000 of which are overseas.
What do you have against people overseas?
America comes first.
I came from overseas.
I came from one of the most miserable corners of this planet, Slum Dog Millionaire.
I used to live one mile from the slums where this movie Slum Dogs.
Okay.
Okay, now, where is that?
In Mumbai, India.
Okay, right.
And here's what you want us to do.
You want us to turn the United States into India.
No, no.
You want to be like Bumbai, that is, where the Indian government controls things.
Okay.
Where the Indian government controls things.
And there's socialism.
That's what this guy wants.
You flee, you ran away from socialism.
You came here with capitalism and did very well.
And now you want to have socialism again.
That is, you want to do away with private property rights.
You want to say that the money that people earned, the money that people earned themselves belonged to somebody else other than themselves.
That is utter nonsense.
And I would like to know, you must have gotten your degree.
If you say you're an economist, you must have gotten your degree in Bumbai University, someplace in India where they don't teach real economics.
But on this show, you're going to get real economics.
We'll be back.
Walter Williams sitting in for the vacationing rush, and you can be on with us by calling 800-282-2882.
There's something else that I find a little bit disturbing, and that is a report that just came out by the Tax Foundation.
And they point out, according to the latest IRS figures for 2008, a record 52 million filers, people who file income tax, that is 36% of the 140 million who filed income taxes, had no tax liability at all because of credits and deductions reduced their liability to zero.
Okay, so you have some 52 million filers and their families have no federal tax liability.
Then you have a whole bunch of Americans who don't file at all.
And of course, they don't have a federal tax liability.
And according to the Tax Foundation, their website, roughly 51% have no tax liability, 51% of all Americans.
Now, that's a problem, isn't it?
Now, I'm not one for taxes, but if you have no tax liability, the big problem with that is that these people become natural constituents for big spending politicians.
That is, if they don't have any federal income tax liability, what do they care about the federal income tax?
How high it goes?
Well, they care about tax cuts.
Matter of fact, that was one of the reasons why the so-called Bush tax cuts weren't very popular.
Because if you're not paying any taxes, how happy can you get over a tax cut?
None whatsoever.
So, anyway, I wrote a column about it.
It did cause a bit of controversy.
And here's what I said.
I just threw it off the top of my head.
I said, now, I think that every single American, well, let's go back a little bit.
I was pointing out in this column that I have no say-so whatsoever in what goes on in Ford Motor Company.
Why?
Because I don't own any stock.
I don't have any financial stake in Ford Motor Company, so I don't have a right to vote on anything that the company does.
Now, so I was thinking that when you're making, if you have any decision-making authority, or if you have any right to vote, then you should have some financial stake in it.
So, what I was proposing in this column, and you think about it, I don't know how much sense it makes, that every single American should have one vote plus one additional vote for each $20,000 he pays in income taxes.
That is, if he has a greater financial stake in the country, then he ought to have a greater say-so.
And so, I don't know.
I don't know where that's actually the founding fathers were worried about that because they said they wanted a property requirement.
That is, they wanted, if you had the right to vote, you should have property.
You should have a stake in what you're voting on.
But anyway, let's go to the phone calls and talk to, and welcome to the show, Bing from Wacoff, Georgia.
I knew a lot of guys, when I was at Fort Stewart, Georgia, I knew a lot of guys who lived in Waycross, Georgia.
You know where Fort Stewart is?
Oh, yeah, I know where that's at.
Yes, in Hinesville, Georgia.
Hinesville, that's right.
That's right.
Well, welcome to the show.
Well, thank you.
Your question posed was about how does the government creep into our lives.
Yeah.
I think that the majority of it happens because there's either a momentous tragedy or there's an ongoing need that people see.
They say, we need to do something about that.
Then along comes either somebody running newly for office or a current politician who says, I can help you with that.
And they use that as a promise to get elected.
And once they're elected, then they begin trying to address that need.
And you left out the most important issue here is that the problem that they're going to try to fix is a problem that they created.
Quite frequently, yes.
And for example, no, almost all the time.
That is the Great Depression.
The Great Depression was caused by the Congress of the United States.
It was caused by the Smoot-Hawley tariff and the Federal Reserve unwise handling of the money supply in our country.
And then it was exacerbated by Roosevelt's New Deal.
It made it worse.
That is what Roosevelt did, his policy, very much like Obama's policy, his policy made what would have been a two or three year sharp downturn in the economy.
He turned it into a depression that was not over until 1946.
Yes, when you said it's caused by themselves, you mean it's caused by the government.
Caused by the government, yes.
And this latest problem that we have is, again, caused by the government.
The idea that everybody should have a home with the subprime mortgages and the no-doc loans and all the manipulation of the housing market, a lot of it's caused by the government or the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates so low that caused people to think that the long term was better than it actually was.
And so most of the major problems that we have are the crisis caused by government.
Now, I doubt whether you can say, well, the attack by the Japanese in 1941, that was not caused by government, and the government's response was good.
Go after the Japanese and make them surrender.
But most of the major problems that we have as a nation are caused by government.
Thanks a lot for calling in.
Let's go to Jane in Joplin, Missouri.
Welcome to the show, Jane.
Thank you.
Glad to be here.
Thank you for calling in.
Thank you.
Oh, can I go ahead and start?
Oh, yes, you are.
You're talking to the man.
All right.
You're going to have a hard time stopping me.
I'm telling you, I am so mad I can hardly stand it.
And I'm so glad I got through.
I want to tell you a story about my grandmother who escaped over here when the Bolsheviks took over in Russia.
Okay, you have to be quick.
We're up against clubs.
She settled in Colorado.
And when the hippies were all moving out into the mountains, she said, this is how it starts.
We said, what are you talking about, Grandma?
She said, I tell you, this is how it starts.
You work, they don't.
They come and take what you have.
This is exactly what's happening to us today.
And it's absolutely frightening that the leaders that we have now have no respect for our country, have no respect to us as Americans, have no respect for anything that is good.
Well, I think you can blame the leaders for a lot of our problems.
But look, Jane, we have to blame the American people because for the most part, these so-called leaders are doing precisely what the American people elect them to office to do.
And what do we elect politicians to office to do?
We elect them to office to use the power of their office to take what belongs to one American and bring it back to them.
Yes.
And we elect politicians to do what if we did privately, we would go to jail.
Right now, we're wanting to tell the politicians, leave us alone.
My husband and I both had a small business, too.
And the one caller earlier was carrying on about how you're supposed to do what the public wants to because you open your doors to the public.
Excuse me, did he work 80, 90 hours a week trying to get that business started?
Did he work there when he would get paid?
The people that we employ get paid, but it was low money and they don't have a lot of understanding.
They don't have much understanding on that at all.
But thanks for calling in.
Let's take a break now, and we'll be back with more of your calls after this.
Walter Williams here, pushing back the frontiers of ignorance.
And, you know, by the way, I wrote in my column on salt tirings.
I got some mail and people say, well, look, Williams, if you eat too much salt, you hurt yourself.
You don't hurt me.
But if you're smoking, ha ha, you hurt me.
Well, well, the EPA study is fraudulent, but let's assume that they're right about the secondhand smoke.
Well, the issue isn't whether I hurt you or not.
That's completely irrelevant.
The issue is private property rights.
That is, if it's my property, then I determine how it's used.
That is, if it's my house and I want to permit smoking, that's my right.
If it's my restaurant and I want to permit smoking, I think that's my right.
Maybe I should put a sign out there saying that smoking is permitted.
And on the other hand, if it's your restaurant, you have a right to say, well, no smoking.
If it's your house, you have the right to say no smoking.
Now, so that's one of the roles of private property rights.
It determines who may harm whom in what ways.
Now, what a lot of people will do, they have contempt for the ideas of liberty associated with private property rights.
That is, they want to be able to forcibly impose their preferences on other people.
Now, they want to be able to use the law to force restaurant or bar owners who are satisfied allowing smoking in their establishment.
They want to force them not to allow smoking.
Now, how would these same people feel if the smokers had the political power and you had a restaurant that you did not want smoking in and they force you to permit smoking?
How would you feel?
You'd feel that would be unjust.
Well, it works the other way, too.
And that's the role of private property.
But what the heck?
You know, most Americans or Americans are increasingly forming a contempt for the ideas of private property.
That is, who owns it ought to make the decisions.
And once you say, well, the government can come in and determine how private property should be used, including your body, because that's private property as well.
Well, you invited the government in.
So they can tell you, well, you can't have so much fat, or you can't eat Philemon unless you trim all the fat off of it.
You can't eat so much salt.
Once you invite government in, you tell government, okay, yeah, you have a foot in the door.
They're going to put the whole body in the door and then you're going to complain about it, but you have invited them in.
Let's go to Deanna in Grass Valley, California.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you.
I wanted to speak to the salt issue.
Okay.
I have a kidney disease that requires my kidneys flush out all the sodium from my body.
And so I need to take extra salt.
I'm on a regular.
Regular basis, yeah.
Yeah, I have a medication for that.
And these people that are doing this have no clue about we're not doctors, and they have no clue about what they're doing.
Well, they have no respect for personal liberty.
That's right.
And you know what they'll do?
I think they would feel sorry for you, Deanna.
I think they'll feel sorry for Deanna that they would probably say, well, let's have a prescription for salt.
You go to the drugstore and get, you know, here's a prescription or a subsidy.
Here's a prescription for salt.
They give you a break.
Okay, let's welcome, let's see, let's welcome John from Orangeville, California.
Dr. Williams, how the heck are you?
Okay.
Very good timing.
My wife just came in and made me lunch after she was mowing the yard.
Okay, good, good.
You have her under control.
Absolutely, absolutely.
I guess you've learned a lot of things from me.
I've been listening to you for a long time.
She does a lot more chores now than she used to.
Yeah, right.
And I believe in keeping wives under control.
You're a good man.
You're a good man.
Okay.
Hey, listen, out here in this area, we're in the Sacramento area.
The big thing out here is the American with Disability Act.
And there's a couple of lawyers, and all they do is go around and they pick these businesses apart because the law says that certain things have to be done.
And they're shutting these poor businesses down.
These guys get in, they open these businesses.
There was a business here that hosts birthday parties, and they have an upstairs facility and a downstairs facility.
And the people came in and said, we want the party upstairs.
And the gentleman was in a wheelchair.
They said, well, we don't have access to that, but we have a wonderful facility downstairs for you to use.
He said, no, I want to be upstairs.
They said, we have a wonderful facility downstairs.
They sued him and they shut the business down.
Yeah, that's, and I think that the Americans Disabilities Act, I think it has gone entirely too far.
And many times, you have facilities when they're not even disabled people.
That's exactly right.
And what you said is that they take these things too far, and that's what happens.
We, as the American people, it's just they get their foot in the door and then it gets worse and worse and worse.
And pretty soon you just, you know, they're telling us how to raise our kids, how to drive our cars, what to do, where to go, how to eat.
And see, if Americans would tell these people up front that they cannot do anything or they are, we just refuse to go along with the program, then I think that the government would back down because they can't put 300 million of us in jail.
We'll be back to your calls after this.
Walter Williams sitting in for the vacation rush limbo.
The next hour, folks, here's my question.
I'm going to ask the next hour.
If one group of Americans prefers government control and the management of people's lives, and another group of Americans prefers liberty and the desire to be left alone, should they be required to fight?
Should they be required to antagonize one another, risk bloodshed and loss of life in order to impose their preferences?
Or should they be able to peaceably part company and go their separate ways?
That's the question for the next hour.
And then also I'm going to ask the question, because free markets or capitalism gets such a bad name.
I'm going to ask, are free markets or capitalism or laissez-faire, is it pro-rich or pro-poor?
That is, do free markets favor the rich or do they favor the poor?
I believe that they favor all of us, but I'm going to tell you precisely why in the next hour.
But in this hour, we're just kind of finishing up that on the salt tyrants and the enough money for those of you who messed up.
And so you'll have to go to Tom Soule's website to see enough money and my website, walterewilliams.com, to read about the salt tyrants.
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