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Dec. 29, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:49
December 29, 2010, Wednesday, Hour #3
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Yes, America's Anchorman is away and this is your undocumented anchorman, Mark Stein sitting in, no supporting paperwork whatsoever.
For the first time in broadcast history, the Rush Limbaugh Show is coming to you from Ice Station EIB in far northern New Hampshire.
This is the inaugural day of our brand new studio here.
I think if I'm right, the Rush Limbaugh Show now has prestige state-of-the-art studios in New York City, Palm Beach, Florida, and Northern Grafton County, New Hampshire.
That'll look great on the business card.
It's a beautiful, beautiful-looking studio, by the way.
Rush, as you know, Rush doesn't like doing the show from New York these days.
Governor Patterson, when Rush said he was turning his back on the city because of the increase in taxes, Governor Patterson said if he had known that was all it would take to run Rush out of town, he'd have raised taxes a long time ago.
That's really a smart thing to say, isn't it, Governor Patterson?
As I said, New York City, in New York City, the top, the richest 1% of taxpayers account for 50% of revenue.
So how many guys like Rush do you have to chase out of town before you've got a serious hole in your treasury coffers?
New York City has an estimated deficit of between $2 and $4 billion.
That's basically how near they can get it.
They can't get it near close enough to estimate even the hole they're in to the nearest billion dollars.
But basically, if you were to take that big pile of snow you can see outside your window in New York City and add another ton of snow on top of it, you'd have an idea of the debt hole, the debt mountain that New York City is laboring under.
So Rush hasn't been doing the show from New York for a while, but I think we ought to try and get him here because this is a new studio.
It's a huge studio.
You can not just get Rush in here, but you could get Rush and Mannheim Steamroller performing live in this space.
It is amazing.
So he could do, next Christmas, he could have Mannheim Steamroller doing his beloved version of Silent Night live in the studio with him.
Unfortunately, we have neither Rush nor Mannheim Steamroller here today, but just me and my three kids will be doing their special 15-minute version of The Little Drummer Boy coming up this hour.
So you don't want to miss that.
They're standing in the corner.
Just imagine them in the corner where Mannheim Steamroller would be.
They'll be doing their 15-minute version of The Little Drummer Boy a little later.
We've been talking about what happened in New York and what it tells us about government and government in the United States of America.
There is a story, there was a story done in Business Insider on America's most bankrupt cities.
These are America's 17 most bankrupt cities.
Two of them have Republican mayors.
Two of them have independents.
One city is so bankrupt that it's already in state receivership.
And 12 cities have Democratic Party mayors, which means that the Democrats are responsible for 70.5% of the most bankrupt cities in the United States of America.
They have huge shortfalls here.
Now, where are these cities?
Where are these cities?
San Diego, California.
Number one, New York City.
Mayor Bloomberg.
Thank you, Mayor Bloomberg.
Number two, San Jose, California, Cincinnati, Ohio, Honolulu, Hawaii, San Francisco, California, Los Angeles, California, Washington, D.C., Newark, New Jersey, Detroit, Michigan, Reading, Pennsylvania, Joliet, Illinois, Camden, New Jersey, Hamtrack, Michigan, Central Falls, Rhode Island, and Paterson, New Jersey.
Look at these California cities in there.
San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Jose.
Now, who's going to bail them out?
Who's going to bail them out?
The state of California is bankrupt.
The state of California can't, a bankrupt state can't bail out bankrupt municipalities.
The only place where the buck can stop is with the federal government.
And I think this is really going to be the big crisis story over the next few years as municipalities start to go belly up.
If they're small towns, you know, like in my small town were to go bankrupt, I think people would let it go bankrupt because who cares?
It doesn't make any difference.
If some nothing little municipality in the middle of nowhere with a few hundred households goes bankrupt, who cares?
People will, those kind of places, you know, we can let them go.
But if it's Los Angeles, if it's New York City, or even if it's like Newark or Paterson, New Jersey, you are going to have serious civil strife unless there is some kind of backup plan for bailing out those profligate, spenderholic, bankrupt, diseased jurisdictions.
So I think the federal government is going to take the view we simply can't afford to let San Francisco go bankrupt because there'll be like militant gays trashing the city.
They're not going to be able to let New York City go bankrupt.
They're not going to let Los Angeles go bankrupt.
What's fascinating to me is the thinking behind the people who lend them the money, who lent these cities the money.
Like if you take Bell, California, Bell, I'd never heard of this town until a couple of months ago.
It's some dump on the edge of Los Angeles, where the citizens have a per capita income of $24,800 per annum.
But you know how much their city manager was getting?
Robert Rizzo was paid $787,637 per annum.
So the city manager had a salary 30 times as much as that of the taxpayers who provided it.
And that's just the start of the fund.
When you add in his other compensation, it came to over $1.5 million per annum.
And by the way, I use the phrase per annum loosely since among the many agreeable aspects of his job was 28 weeks off for vacation and sick leave.
So in practical terms, it worked out to $1.5 million per five and a half months.
Now, I used to make jokes.
You know, when Greece collapsed a few months ago and Greek public sector workers go home at 2.30 in the afternoon and they work about seven months.
I used to joke that Greek public sector workers work 24-7.
That's to say they work 24 hours a week for seven months of the year.
And that was my little joke about Greece.
But in fact, it's worse in California.
They work 24, 5.5.
They work 24 hours a week for five and a half months of the year.
This guy got a million and a half for five and a half months work a year.
And then he sneered when people started complaining about that.
You know, maybe I'm in the wrong business.
I could go into private business and make that money.
And when he was shamed, this guy, Robert Rizzo, was shamed into quitting along with his colleagues, his assistant city manager, who was getting $845,000 a year, and the chief of police who had to get by on a crummy $770,000 a year.
When they were shamed, along with other members of the Democratic Party's kleptocracy for life into doing the honorable thing and resigning, the best part of that is that it's not only honorable, it's highly lucrative, because at that point their pension packages kicked in, and by some sources, that was estimated to have a lifetime value of $50 million.
So in other words, all those people in Bell, California getting by on $24,000 a year have the satisfaction of knowing that they'll be ponying up a pension for Robert Rizzo of over $600,000 a year until the day he dies.
The day he dies.
What is fascinating about this one crummy, decrepit, diseased, depraved hellhole on the outskirts of Los Angeles is that even though its debt to revenue ratio is twice as high as New York's,
which is no poster boy for prudent finances, and even though by the year 2008 it had piled up nearly $80 million of debt on its 38,000 all-but-minimum wage residents, none of the blue-chip insurers, bondholders and guarantors were in the least bit bothered.
All the guys with the toniest names, Citigroup, Wedbush, Morgan, all these people continued to facilitate this kleptocrat city management in complete defiance of its basic arithmetical implausibility.
Absolutely amazing.
You know why?
Because they know that in the end, even if this crummy town goes bankrupt, the state of California will bail it out.
And okay, yeah, sure, California's bankrupt, but the government of the United States is going to bail it out.
And that's what's so dangerous about all this, because in the end, big government corrupts the private sector too.
It corrupted Citigroup, it corrupted Wedbush-Morgan, it corrupted all the people who were insuring and guaranteeing this disgusting kleptocratic government in Bell, California.
None of the usual elements of risk evaluation and the other virtues of a functioning private sector applied here because who needs that?
None of these people would, if you'd gone in to see Citigroup and tried to borrow money on this basis, they'd have shown you the door.
But when it's government, when it's government, they take the view that even crazy spendthrift government doesn't totally default because there's always someone it can pass the buck to.
Lord Acton said power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
And for all this city's underwriters, as for the underwriters of Patterson, New Jersey, and for Los Angeles and for New York City and for all the other bankrupt municipalities in America, just as Lord Acton said, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, for the underwriters and the insurers, coziness with power corrupts very cozily.
All these guys like Citigroup know that you can give as much, you can toss as you can guarantee anything, you can insure anything in New York City because the government of the United States is not going to let New York City go bankrupt.
And that is the lesson of Bell, California.
Ask not for whom bell tolls.
It tolls for thee.
We have diseased municipalities in diseased states.
And if, like me, you think you live far away from it all, You live up on the hill in an obscure corner of northern New Hampshire in a relatively fiscally sane state.
You're just going to be penalized because you didn't spend, spend, spend like all these crazies did down in Paterson, New Jersey, in San Jose, California.
And you're the one who's going to be stuck with the tab for bailing these people out.
Now, these cities I mentioned, Camden, New Jersey, Hamtrack, Michigan, Paterson, New Jersey, Central Falls, Rhode Island, Joliet, Illinois, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose.
If you live in any of these cities and you voted for these Democrat administrations that have bankrupted these cities, I'd like to know what you got for it and why you thought it was worth making some of the most famous, iconic cities in the United States of America bankrupt to keep electing these administrations.
1-800-282-2882.
If you're one of these liberal voters who returns Democrat administrations to office again and again and again in Camden, New Jersey or San Jose, California, I'd like to hear from you.
1-800-282-2882, Mark Stein, in for rush.
Mark Stein in for rush in the midst of Kwanzaa.
Kwanzaa Kwanzaa.
You know, I mentioned Kwanza because I read out that story from the Gary Post of Gary, Indiana with the fascinating picture caption of Jihad Mohammed, Mr. Jihad Mohammed, lighting the Kwanzaa candles, what is it called?
The candle, the Karenga of the candle of Karenga or whatever, for the official celebration of Michael Jackson at the Kwanzaa celebration in Gary, Indiana.
I said, if you had the Gary, Indiana Kwanzaa celebration, give us a call and let us know how it went.
And I haven't had any response from attendees of the Kwanza celebrations in Gary, Indiana, but I've had a ton of email from people saying, It's not funny to joke about Kwanzaa.
A Kwanza is a phony baloney, anti-white racist travesty cooked up by a convicted felon.
Why don't you tell the truth about that?
Well, I know all the truth about Kwanza.
People seem to think it's some authentic African-American thing, but it was.
It was cooked up in the 1960s in California.
A Canadian blogger called Kathy Schadel has a terrific piece that she runs every Kwanzaa exposing the complete crock that Kwanzaa is, even if you take it at face value.
I mean, who the hell wants a celebration of Afro-Marxist economics that have done such wonders for the economy of sub-Saharan Africa?
I mean, at least when Julius Nayeri was beggaring Tanzania, he had the sense of humor when he was introducing collectivist agriculture and all the other nonsense.
What?
Celebrating, what's that, Mr. Snadley?
Celebrating Labor Day.
I celebrate Labor Day.
I don't even really believe in celebrating Labor Day, actually.
One of the great things about the United States, I think, is that what started out as a great holiday for oppressed workers eventually just became a day to go to the beach and for the last day to wear your white shoes.
I don't wear white shoes before.
Well, I do, actually.
I don't like to mention it on the air because it reminds me of Pat Boone in his white bucks.
But I do like to wear white shoes before Labor Day.
But I like the way Labor Day has just become a day that you don't.
Nobody celebrates labor on Labor Day anymore.
It used to be Labor Day has become the precise inversion of what it was.
But what I like, the Kwanzaa thing, the Afro-Marxist economic aspects of it, I expect they celebrate it at USDA because they've got that Shirley Sherrod, who was in the news and is an USDA agent.
Her two children are called Russia and Kenyatta.
And Americans don't always remember this, but Jomo Kenyatto was the first prime minister of post-colonial Kenya, where the current father of our nation, or the new father of our new nation, his family hails from Kenya.
And it's extraordinary to me that we would have agricultural officials naming their children after Marxist post-colonial leaders in Africa who absolutely beggared that continent and destroyed some of the most productive soil in the world.
But speaking of productive soil, let us go to Sue in the granite state itself, southern New Hampshire.
Sue, that's what it says on my call screen.
Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Hi, Mark.
How are you?
And now it just says southern New Hampshire here because Mr. Snerdley and all those metropolitan sophisticates to our south don't know the various various nooks and crannies of society.
Well, I did tell him that I was from the southern New Hampshire and I was going to do a southern accent for him if he preferred.
I'm from the seacoast of New Hampshire.
Oh, you're the opposite end.
So you're in southeastern New Hampshire because I'm all the way up in northwestern New Hampshire.
Right, you're up in the Vermont, almost Canada area.
Yes.
Don't say it with such contempt.
Mr. Snerdley says, oh, right, you're only 20 minutes away.
Where not?
It would take me like six hours of zigzagging to get to you down the Kangabagus Highway and all through mountain passes at all the rest of it.
Now, Sue.
We are better plowed than New York City is.
Yeah, that's right.
On a day like today, you can get up to the top of Mount Washington, but you can't go down Fifth Avenue and go shopping at Macy's.
Thank you, Mayor Bloomberg.
Okay, Sue, what's on your mind?
Great to have you with us.
Well, I was just thinking about this last session of Congress and the fact that this so-called lame duck was neither lame nor it was a ducky.
And I don't think it was ducky for the American people.
All of this stuff that they tried to push through Congress without even the slightest scrutiny.
And the fact that Republicans didn't seem to mount to much of an opposition, I'm kind of disappointed on that.
Well, you know, I think I said here last week, I was, who was it I was channeling, Golden Meir or Abba Iban, their line about the Palestinians, that the Republicans never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
November the 2nd seems like a long time ago now.
It was, as the Claremont Review of Books cover story right now calls it, it was the great repudiation.
And the Republican leadership in Washington didn't seem to get that memo.
They thought what we were voting for on November the 2nd was a lot of kind of reach across the aisle type bipartisan spirit of compromise stuff.
And I don't think that was the it wasn't nobody sent Washington the message that they wanted us to work together to get things done for the American people.
They said they wanted us to get less done for the American people, Sue.
And it looks like the Republicans have managed, as you said, to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory again.
Mark Stein in Farush on the EIB network.
Great being with you.
I'll be here tomorrow.
And then don't forget that on Friday for New Year's Eve, we will have a special best of rush presentation, Rush Returns live next Tuesday, January the 4th.
Hey, great to be with you, your undocumented anchor man sitting in Farush.
You know, I believe it's a condition of my green card that I'm not allowed to foment armed insurrection against the government of the United States.
I have to be a wee bit careful about this.
By the way, I don't think there's anything in there about fermenting armed insurrection against state governments or municipal ones.
So nuts to Mayor Bloomberg and to the New York State Bureau of Compliance.
I think I'm free to ferment arms insurrection against them to the fullness of my ability.
But I do think at some point the bankruptcy of American municipalities and American states is going to become an issue for the territorial integrity of the United States of America.
Because let's face it, if the first time that a state gets bailed out, America is telling the world that the 49 other states are basically in line for bailouts too.
And the minute you do that, essentially the federal government will be assuming the combined debt of every worthless bankrupt disease municipality and every worthless bankrupt disease state in the Union.
And at that point, there's no end to it.
At that point, if you do happen to live in somewhere that has been fiscally prudent, and I don't just mean New Hampshire, but you can also cite Texas as well.
There's a few of us still left.
The question then becomes, how far are Texans willing to go to keep 50 stars in the flag of the United States of America?
How far, it doesn't even have to be Texas.
It can just be kind of relatively quiet, lightly populated states like Wyoming.
How much money are residents of Wyoming willing to spend to keep 50 states in the flag of the United States of America?
In other words, the disgusting spenderholic behavior of Bloomberg and other and similar municipalities actually puts a question mark over the territorial integrity of the United States of America.
This is actually a huge crisis.
The gap between what big union public sector workers pay themselves, reward themselves, taking retirement ever earlier in middle age, and the rest of the population that has to pay for them will actually, in effect, lead, I think, to secession movements in obscure parts of the Union and then actually to civil war within states.
But as I said, it's a condition of my green card that I'm not allowed to ferment armed insurrection against the government of the United States.
So I do just want to issue a disclaimer that I'm not actually advocating civil war and armed insurrection against the government of the United States, because otherwise they might send me a memo telling me to come in for my deportation hearing around about July the 17th, 2033, or whenever they can fit in by.
Let's go to Patty in Phoenix, Arizona.
Patty, thank you for waiting.
You are live on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Great to have you with us.
Oh, thank you.
Mark, I just loved you to pieces, and your wife doesn't need to be a second of jealousy because I'm old enough to be your mother or grandmother.
I don't know which.
Oh, well, I like older women.
And I find that the older I get, the fewer of them there are.
It's funny how that works.
But don't rule yourself out of contention there, Patty.
Okay, the Texas congressman that you had on, I got so moved.
You know, we need to hold ourselves accountable.
Every time Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi and Neri got re-elected, and that's the only people that the media will go to, every time the media goes to them, whether you're alone in your car or in a crowd in a plane state, you know, a plane, yeah.
Right.
It doesn't matter.
You make that sound almost romantic.
Some enchanted evening.
You may be alone in your car, and you'll still hear Barney Frank speaking for the Republic.
You need to give it a high five or a power fist in the air and say, yay, team, go get them.
Get these cowardly, corrupt congressional critters.
Round them up.
Hold them hostage.
Hold them hostage.
Now you're talking like the Democrats.
Barack Obama was complaining that the Republicans were holding him hostage, and that's why he had no choice.
Wonderful.
Yeah, he complained that the Republicans were holding the American people hostage and he had no choice but to surrender.
So that's a...
Why didn't he put his shoe on the other foot and learn to laugh?
Now, you're right, though.
That's, by the way, sending a real tough message to Al-Qaeda or whoever that when the President of the United States says, oh, when the American people are held hostage, we have no choice but to surrender.
Anyway, Paddy, you're right that we need to hold ourselves accountable because politicians, wherever you are, want to do what is – you've got to make what you – the right thing to do the easy option.
We talked about this, Milton Friedman's great line.
It's not about electing the right people.
It's about creating a political climate in which the wrong people are forced to do the right thing.
And when Harry Reid had to stand on the floor and withdraw that trillion-dollar monstrosity of a spending bill, the wrong person had been forced to do the right thing.
And that applies whether they're, as we're already seeing, that applies whether they're Democrat or Republican.
There's a lot of squishy Republicans.
There's a lot of reach across the aisle types.
And that's why it's important to maintain a political climate in which Olympia Snow and Susan Collins and all the rest of them are forced to go along with things they don't want to do because the political climate out there makes it impossible for them to do their usual reach across the aisle thing.
You're absolutely right about that, Patty.
It's about holding all of their feet to the fire.
Not only that, but Mark, you know, Rush likes to hold the analogy of football and politics.
I think that especially the Democrats, there's an analogy between hockey and politics.
Okay, go for it with your hockey analogy.
I know more about hockey because I'm totally unassimilated with American sport.
So all I know about football is it's one where they sing take me out to the ball game in the seventh inning pat down.
That's all I know about American football.
Okay, but hockey.
So lay the hockey analogy on me and I'll try to imagine that.
Flip the issue around the boards.
Get in the box.
They box it up.
And the very second that there's an opportunity, they got the puck in the net.
And we have to be vigilant as the voters.
70% of the people in this country voted to oust them.
It wasn't a matter of communications.
It was a matter of doing the right thing.
And this is the country I love.
Right.
And you are absolutely right.
70% is an interesting way to look at it, actually, because when you look at all the numbers pretty consistently, they go 70-30 on these things.
70% of the American people want small government, and they want a light touch, a light regulatory touch that liberates American citizens to fulfill their economic potential.
And then there's 30% of the population, and that's actually far too many and way too unhealthy.
30% who would like to live in a European-style social democracy.
But nevertheless, those are the numbers.
70-30, 70-30, 70-30.
So why do we keep getting big, big, big, big, big government getting bigger and bigger and more and more expensive?
As you say, it's because we don't keep our eyes on the ball.
We think we come out of that voting booth on the Tuesday evening every other November and think that's it.
Okay, now I don't have to worry about this for a couple more years.
No, the lesson of the last two years, the lesson of the last two years, and you're right about this, Patty, is that it's not about holding our elected officials accountable.
It's about holding ourselves accountable.
And as Congressman Gomert said in the last hour, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
And we do not want the Republican Party to default to the way it was in 2004, 2005.
The Tea Party movement chose to work within the zombie husk of the Republican Party this time round.
But they won't work within the zombie husk of the Republican Party next time round if the Republican Party just defaults to the way it was 2004, 2006.
And we have to remember that.
It's vitally important.
Let us go to Steve in State College, Pennsylvania.
Steve, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Great to have you with us.
And a belated Merry Christmas from one ex-patriot Canadian to another.
Where are you from in Canada, Steve?
I'm from Toronto.
Oh, and how did you end up in State College, Pennsylvania?
You're responsible for a chain of unsolved murders down by the road?
I'm laughing about what's going on in New York City.
And you probably remember January 1999 when Toronto Mayor Mel Lassman called out the Army because the blizzard that ground down Toronto.
And, you know, he's still being laughed at to this day by the libs north of the border.
But he got the job done, and the city was cleared.
It took a while.
They even had volunteers coming in from as far away as Prince Edward Island.
You don't see that in New York.
As you said earlier, they're not even coming in from places like New Jersey and Connecticut after they got cleared there and in your New Hampshire.
No, no.
And as I said, it's because they'd be reassigned to Albany to go through sensitivity training when they got there, and then they wouldn't get their payment for 18 months afterwards until they'd filled in a form with the Bureau of Compliance.
But you know, Steve, the interesting point about that is the Army is not cleared.
The Army are not cleared to run highway equipment.
The Army do not have the training that, for example, the New York State Transportation and Sanitation Department guys have in operating snowplows.
True enough.
Yet plowing, plowing, I know this like many people do in New Hampshire.
Actually, plowing isn't that difficult.
And certainly shoveling and operating snowblowers isn't that difficult.
On the sidewalks of New York, for example, why couldn't, say, the members of the New York State Bureau of Compliance or the New York State, whatever it is, computer, commuter, municipal transportation reassignment tax or whatever, those guys, why couldn't they be reassigned?
They're able-bodied people, most of them.
Why couldn't they be reassigned to shoveling and operating snowblowers on the sidewalks of Fifth Avenue?
People are walking in the tire tracks of the streets of Manhattan's main boulevards because Mayor Bloomberg's bureaucracy has taken the week off.
And that's the lesson.
That's the lesson that Mayor Lassman understood in Toronto, that for some reason, no matter how big a government, how big a government bureaucracy is, in the end, for some reason, when something bad happens, they don't instinctively kick into gear.
They say, they look out the window.
The guy from the Bureau of Compliance draws his curtains in the morning and sees it snowing.
And he doesn't say, oh, well, I'm a member of city government.
I need to get out there and start working for the people who pay for me and keep me in my job and my pension and my fantastic benefits.
He says, oh, great, it's snowing.
I'll just take the day off.
And that is the problem with big government, Steve.
And sadly, that's as true as it is north of the border as it is south of the border.
Do you get anything in State College, by the way?
We have not got a flake on the ground here.
In fact, I find that very hard to believe, given the way people vote in Pennsylvania.
Really?
Honest to God, we drove back from Toronto on Boxing Day, had some snow in northern Pennsylvania, no problems driving, and got back here 10:30 at night, and there's literally not a flake on the ground.
Really?
I think it's the Amish.
The Amish cleared it.
While you were in Toronto on Boxing Day, the Amish cleared the state for you.
They get out there in the horse and buggy.
It's all gone by five in the morning.
That's the fortunate system you have in Pennsylvania.
Great to talk to you, Steve.
Mark Stein in for us.
Lots more on the EIB network to come.
1-800-282-2882.
Obama must convert to Islam, says Somali Wardlaw.
Fuad Mohammed Shongoli Calaf said in his radio message, that U.S. president, Barack Obama, must convert to Islam, or Somalia's al-Shabaab militia would launch attacks in the United States.
I don't know.
They could conceivably be behind this huge snowfall that has devastated New York City.
We don't know.
I mean, I don't know whether Mayor Bloomberg has established whether it's snow yet.
Could be Anthrax.
Could be Anthrax.
I think we need an investigation.
But Obama must convert to Islam, says Fuad Mohamed Shongoli Calaf, Somali warlord, direct from Mogadishu Radio, where the radio reception functioning radio communications are almost as big a technological challenge as they are here in northern New Hampshire.
Let's go to Rob in Long Island, New York, where the island isn't really that long.
It just seems that long to get anywhere on it, thanks to the way the cities and the island is run.
Rob, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Hey, Mark, how are you?
Greetings.
I'm good.
How are you?
Good.
Greetings from the state that has to raise taxes from $900 million to $4.5 billion by 2015 to maintain teacher pensions, assuming an 8% return on investment, and add on another $4 billion for that for the policemen and firefighters for the taxpayers.
Now, do you work in the private sector, Rob?
Yes.
What are you, nuts?
I mean, why?
Why would you work in the private sector in the state of New York?
In the state of New York, you should be a school teacher or with the Department of Snowplowing or whatever, and you'll retire at 52 on a fabulous pension, and some other suckers will pay for it.
Isn't that how it works?
Well, yeah, you were on a rant about the issue of Belt California.
I want to remind your listeners here in New York, we've got Frank Dasson, who with some other folks conspired to steal $11 million.
He was the superintendent of a school, did seven months in jail, comes out, gets his pension, $174,000 a year the rest of his life.
It's like you and I having to save, say, $4 or $5 million if he lives for 30 years.
But I really told you about health care.
That's what I do professionally.
Okay.
Okay, that was an artful segue there.
I hardly noticed the change of topic, but make your health care point, Rob.
Well, both of them will hopefully help create more jobs in New York for the 25-year-old who's got a $30,000 student alone.
These policies need to go quickly and dramatically to pure risk policies.
The third-party payer system does not work.
You've got to expose health care for these visits to doctors for primary care, for blood tests, radiology, sundry things that you would think nothing of paying these services for your car, but you don't know what these average charges are.
And they have to be done quickly because the rates are exploding.
Across my desk, I got about 50 notices from a certain carrier that's telling me, hey, next October, 11 months from now, we're planning to seek increases of 27 to 67 percent increases on your clients.
And you're absolutely right there, Rob, that we need to get these things out of third-party transactions because then you never care.
You never care about the cost of them.
All you care about is whether the third party will give you access to them.
You imagine how it would go if you had third-party insurers taking care of it if you went to the movie.
If you went to the movie theater, you wouldn't care whether it was $9 for the ticket or $90 or $9,000 for the ticket.
All you care is that the third party gives you access to it.
And that's why healthcare costs are exploding, and that's why the government is using the exploding healthcare costs as a pretext for a government takeover.
Mark Stein in for Rush on the EIB Network.
The inaugural edition of the Rush Limbaugh Show, live from Ice Station EIB in northern New Hampshire.
Thanks to Mr. Snurdley and all the gang in Palm Beach and New York, and to Tiffany and Melissa here in New Hampshire, the best pals a Flatlander ever had.
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