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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 anchor man is away, and this is your undocumented anchor man, 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 E. I.B. in far northern uh New Hampshire.
This is the inaugural day of our brand new uh brand new studio here.
I think if I'm uh if I'm uh if I'm right, the the Rush Limbaugh Show now has prestige state of the art studios in New York City, Palm Beach, C uh Palm Palm Beach, uh, Florida, and Northern Grafton County, New Hampshire.
That'll look great on the business card.
Uh it's a beautiful, beautiful looking studio, by the way.
Rush, as you know, uh Rush uh doesn't like doing the show from uh New York these days.
Governor Patterson, when Rush said he was uh turning his back on the city because of the increase of taxes.
Uh 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, um New York City, in New York City, the top the richest one percent of taxpayers account for fifty percent 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 uh two and four billion dollars.
Uh that's that's uh that's basically how near they can get it.
They can't get in near close enough to estimate even the hole they're in to the nearest billion dollars.
Uh but basically if you 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 uh uh an idea of the debt hole, the debt mountain, uh that uh New York City is laboring under.
So Rush uh hasn't been doing the show from uh New York for a while, but we ought to try I think we ought to try and get him um here, because this is like this is uh this is a new studio, it's a huge studio.
You cannot 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 uh he could have Manheim steamroller doing uh that uh uh his beloved version of Silent Night live in the studio with him.
Uh unfortunately we have neither Rush nor Manheim steamroller here today, but just me and um and uh my my three kids will be doing their special fifteen minute version of the little drummer boy coming up this hour, so you don't want to miss that.
They'll be they're standing in the corner.
Just imagine them in the corner where Manheim Steamroller would be.
Uh they'll be doing their fifteen minute version of the little drummer boy uh uh uh a little later.
Um we've been talking about what uh happened in New York and what it tells us about uh government and government in uh the United States of America.
Um there is a story, there was a story done on uh in Business Insider on America's most bankrupt cities.
These are America's seventeen most bankrupt cities.
Two of them have Republican mayors, two of them have independence, one city is so bankrupt that it's already in state receivership, and twelve cities have Democratic Party mayors, which means that the Democrats are responsible for 70 point five percent 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, uh 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 afford uh a bankrupt state can't bail out bankrupt new municipalities.
Uh the only place where the buck can stop is with the federal government.
And I think this is this is really going to be the uh the big crisis uh story over The next few years as uh municipalities start to go belly up.
Uh 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 uh households goes bankrupt, who cares?
People will those those kind of places, you know, we can let them go.
But if it's Los Angeles, if it's New York City, even if it's like Newark or Patterson, New Jersey, you are going to have serious uh civil strife uh unless there is some kind of backup plan for bailing out those profligate, spenderholic, bankrupt, diseased jurisdictions.
Uh 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 uh there'll be like uh militant gays trashing the city.
Uh 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 what's uh fascinating to me is the thinking behind the people who 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 till a couple of months ago.
It's some dump on the edge of Los Angeles, uh where the citizens have a per capita income of uh twenty-four thousand eight hundred uh per annum.
But there you know how much their city manager was getting?
Robert Ritzo was paid seven hundred and eighty-seven thousand six hundred and thirty-seven dollars per annum.
So the city manager had a salary thirty times as much as that of the taxpayers who provided it.
And it only that's just the start of the fund.
Uh when you add in his other compensation, it came to over one point five million dollars per annum.
And by the way, I use the phrase per annum loosely, uh, since among the uh many agreeable aspects of his job was twenty-eight weeks off for vacation and six and sick leave.
Uh in in it so in practical terms, it w it worked out to one point five million dollars per five and a half months.
Now I used to make jokes, you know, when Greece uh collapsed a few months ago and Greek public sector workers go home at two thirty in the afternoon, uh and they work about seven months.
I used to joke that uh, you know, Greek Greek public sector workers work twenty-four seven.
That's to say they work twenty twenty-four uh 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 twenty-four, five and a half.
They work twenty-four hours a week for five and a half months of the year.
Uh this guy got um uh a million and a half for uh five and a half months work a year.
Uh and then he sneered when people started complaining about that.
Uh, 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 uh colleagues, uh his assistant city manager who was getting eight hundred and forty-five thousand dollars a year, and the chief of police had to get by on a crummy seven hundred and seventy thousand dollars a year.
When they were shamed in uh uh along with other members of the Democratic Party's cryptocracy for life into uh doing the honorable thing and resigning, uh 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 uh by some sources that was estimated to have a lifetime value of fifty million dollars.
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 uh ponying up a pension for Robert Rizzo of over six hundred thousand dollars a year until the day he dies.
The day he dies.
Uh what is fascinating about this one crummy decrepit, diseased, depraved hellhole uh on the outskirts of Los Angeles, is that um even though uh its uh debt to rev revenue ratio is twice as high as New York's,
which is no poster boy for uh for prudent finances, and even though by uh the year two thousand and eight it had piled up nearly eighty million dollars of debt on its thirty-eight thousand all but minimum wage residents, uh none of the blue chip insurers, bondholders, and guarantors were in the least bit bothered.
All the guys with the Tonyest names, uh Citigroup, uh Wedbush, Morgan, all these people continue to facilitate this uh kleptocrat city management in complete defiance of its basic um arithmetical implausibility.
Absolutely amazing.
Uh you know, why?
Because they know that in the end, even if uh even if this crummy town goes bankrupt, uh 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 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 uh who were uh who were insuring and guaranteeing this uh this disgusting uh kleptocratic government in Bell, California.
Uh none of the usual elements of risk evaluation and the other virtues of a functioning private sector applied here, because uh uh why why who 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 uh they'd have shown you the door.
But when it's government, when it's government, uh they take the view that even crazy spendthrift government doesn't totally default because there's always someone it can pass uh pass the buck to.
Uh Lord Lord Acton said uh uh power corrupts, uh 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, uh power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
For the uh underwriters and the insurers, coziness with power corrupts very cozily.
Uh 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 gonna let uh uh New York City uh go bankrupt.
Uh and that is the lesson of Bell California.
Us 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 uh you live up on the hill in an obscure corner of northern New Hampshire in a relatively fiscally sane state, you're just gonna be penalized because you didn't spend spend spend like all these crazies did down in Patterson, New Jersey and San Jose, California, and you're the one who's going to be stuck with the tab for bailing these people out.
Now I uh these cities I mentioned, Camden, New Jersey, Hamtrack, Michigan, Patterson, New Jersey, Central Falls, Ro Rhode Island, uh 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 a worth making some of the most famous, iconic cities in the United States of America bankrupt to keep electing these uh uh administrations.
1800-282-2882.
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 Kwanzaa because I read out that story from the uh Gary Post of uh Gary, Indiana with the fascinating picture caption of Jihad Mohammed, Mr. Jihad Mohammed, lighting the uh lighting the uh Kwanzaa candles, the curr the ca what is it called, the candle, the Kerenga of K the candle of Kerengo or whatever, for to to for the official celebration of Michael Jackson at the uh at the Kwanzaa celebration in Gary, Indiana.
I said if you had the Gary, Indiana Kwanzaa celebration, give it give us a call and let us know how it went.
And I've had uh haven't had any response from uh attendees uh of the Kwanzaa celebrations in Gary, Indiana, uh, but I've had uh uh a ton of email from people saying, it's not funny to joke about Kwanzaa, uh Kanza is a phony baloney, anti white racist uh travesty uh cooked up by a convicted felon.
Why don't why don't you tell the truth about that?
Well, I know all the truth about uh Kwanzaa.
People seem to think it's some authentic uh, you know, African American thing, but it was.
It was cooked up in uh 1960s in California.
A Canadian uh blogger called Kathy Shadel has a terrific piece that she runs every Kwanzaa, uh exposing the uh the the complete crook that uh that Kwanzaa is.
Um 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 uh for the economy of sub-Saharan Africa?
I mean, at least when um Julius Naireri 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. Snardly?
Celebrating Labor Day.
I celebrate Labor Day.
I don't even really believe in celebrating Labor Day, actually.
I one of the great things about uh the United States, I think, is that what started out as a uh as a great holiday for oppressed workers uh eventually just became uh a day to go to the beach and uh for the last day to uh to 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 uh Pat Boone in his uh white bucks.
Uh but uh but I do like to wear white uh shoes before Labor Day, but I like the way Labor Day has just become uh a day that you uh you you don't nobody celebrates Labor on uh on Labor Day anymore.
Nobody so it used to be Labor Day has become the precise inversion of what it was.
But what I like uh uh what what uh the the Kwanzaa thing, the Afro Marxist economic aspects of it.
I I uh expect they celebrate it at Uzda because they've got uh that that uh Shirley Sherrod, who uh who who got who was in the news in and is an USDA agent.
Uh her her uh two children are called r uh Russia and Kenyatta.
And uh Americans uh don't always remember this, but Jomo Kenyato was the first prime minister of post-colonial Kenya, uh, where the uh the current uh father of our nation uh or the the new father of our new nation uh his family hails from Kenya.
And uh it it ex it's extraordinary to me that uh that we would have agricultural officials naming their children after after Marxist colonial lead post-colonial leaders in Africa who absolutely beggared that uh continent and destroyed uh s some of the most uh productive soil in the world.
But speaking of productive soil, let us go to Sue in the granite state itself, Southern New Hampshire.
Uh Sue, that's what that's what it says on my call screen.
Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Hi, Mark, how are you?
Because Mr. Snerdley and all those uh metropolitan sophisticates to our South don't don't know the various the various uh nooks and crannies of Southern New Hampshire.
He preferred.
Uh I'm from the sea coast 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.
Yes.
Don't say it with such contempt.
No, no, Miss Mr. Snerdley says, oh, right, you're only twenty minutes away.
Where where not?
It would take me like uh six hours of zigzagging to get to you down the Cagamagas Highway and all through mountain passes uh at all at all the at all the rest of it.
Which was a way a better plow than that, 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 what's on your mind?
Great to have you with us.
Well, I was just thinking about this last session of Congress and uh the fact that this so-called lame duck.
It was neither lame nor it was a ducky.
And uh I don't think it was ducky for the American people.
All at this they tried to push through Congress with that uh even the slightest scrutiny and and the fact that Republicans didn't seem to amount to much of an opposition.
I'm kind of disappointed on that.
Well, you know, I think I said here last week I was uh who is it I was channeling, uh Goldemar or ABBA Iban, their line about the Palestinians that the uh uh the the Republicans never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
November the second seems like a long time ago now.
Uh 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 second 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 uh 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 uh the Republicans have managed uh, as you said, to uh snatch defeat from the uh from the jaws of victory again.
Uh Mark Stein in Farush on uh on the EIB network.
Uh great being with you.
I'll be here tomorrow, and then don't forget uh that on Friday for New Year's Eve, we will have a special best of rush presentation, Rush returns live next Tuesday, January the fourth.
Hey, great to be with you.
Your undocumented anchor man uh sitting in uh for rush.
Um you know, I believe it's a condition of uh my green card that I'm not allowed to foment armed insurrection against the government of the United States.
So I have to be a wee bit careful about this.
I by the way, I don't think there's anything in there about fermenting armed insurrection about uh state uh against state governments, so as far or municipal ones, so nuts to Mayor Bloomberg and to uh the New York State Bureau of Compliance.
I think I'm free to ferment arms insurrection against them uh uh to the fullness of my ability.
But um uh but I do think at some point this this the bankruptcy of American municipalities and American states is gonna become uh an issue for the territorial integrity of the United States of America.
Because let's face it, uh if the first time that a state gets bailed out, America is telling the world uh that uh the forty-nine other states uh are basically uh in line for bailouts uh uh too.
And the minute you do that, uh essentially the federal government will be assuming uh the combined debt uh 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.
Uh 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 uh there's a few of us still left.
The question then becomes how uh how im how far are Texans willing to go to keep fifty stars in the flag of the United States of America?
Uh how far it doesn't even have to be Texas, it can just be kind of uh relatively quiet, uh lightly populated states like Wyoming.
How f how much money are residents of Wyoming willing to spend to keep fifty states in the flag of the United States of America?
In other words, the disgusting spenderholic behavior of Bloomberg uh and other and similar municipalities actually puts a question mark uh over over the territorial integrity of the United States of America.
This is actually a huge crisis.
Uh the the the gap between what uh what public uh big union public sector workers pay themselves, reward themselves, uh taking retirement ever earlier in middle age, and uh the rest of the population that has to pay for them will actually, in effect, uh lead, I think, uh, to uh to 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 foment armed insurrection uh against the government of the United States.
So I do just want to issue a disclaimer that I'm not actually advocating uh civil war and armed insurrection against the government of the United States.
Because otherwise they might send me a memo uh telling me to come in for my deportation hearing round about uh July the 17th, uh, 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.
No, well, I like I like older Women.
And I find that the uh the older I get uh 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 I got so moved.
You know, we need to hold ourselves accountable.
Every time uh Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi and 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 uh plain state uh you know, a plane uh yeah.
Right.
It does You make that sound uh you make that so you make that sound almost romantic.
Some in Chad in Evening, you may be alone in your car, and you'll still hear Barney Frank speaking for the Republic.
Uh you need to give it a high five or a power fist in the ear and say, Yay, team, go get 'em.
Get them cowardly corrupt congressional critters.
Round 'em up.
Hold them hostage.
Hold them hostage.
Now you're talking like the Democrats.
Now you're Barack Obama was complaining that the Republicans were holding him hostage, and that's why he had no choice.
Yeah, he complained that the uh Republicans were holding the American people hostage and he had no choice but to surrender.
So that's a uh you on the other foot and learn to laugh.
Now, you're right, though.
That's by the way, sending a real tough message to uh Al Qaeda or whoever that uh when the President of the United States says, so uh when uh when the American people are held hostage, we have no choice but to surrender.
Anyway, Patty, uh you're right that we need to hold ourselves accountable.
Because uh b politicians, wherever you are, want to do what is you 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 it's 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 the 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.
Uh and that's why it's important to maintain a political climate in which uh Olympia Snow and Susan Collins and all the rest of them are forced to go along with things they don't want to do uh because the political climate out there makes it impossible uh 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, um Rush likes to uh hold the analogy of football and politics.
I think that especially the Democrats, there's an analogy between hockey and politics.
Okay, go go for it with your hockey analogy.
I know more about hockey because I'm totally unassimilated with American sport.
So uh I all I know about football is it's one where they sing uh take me out to the ball game in the seventh inning pat down.
That's all I know about American football.
Okay, but how so lay lay the hockey analogy on me and I'll try to imagine uh that uh 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.
Right as the voters.
Seventy percent of the people in this country voted to oust them.
It wasn't a matter of uh communications, it was a matter of doing the right thing.
And this is a country I love.
Right.
And you are and you are absolutely right.
Seventy percent is an interesting way to look at it, actually, because when you look at all the numbers pretty consistently, uh seventy they go 70-30 on these things.
Seventy percent of the American people uh want small government and they want a a light touch, uh light regulatory touch that liberates American citizens to fulfill their economic potential.
And then there's thirty percent of the population, and that's actually far too many, uh way too unhealthy.
Thirty percent who would like to live in a European style social democracy.
But nevertheless, those are the numbers seventy thirty, seventy thirty, seventy thirty.
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, uh, is that it's not about holding our elected officials accountable, it's about holding ourselves accountable.
And uh as Congressman Gomert said uh in the last hour, uh the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
And we do not want the Republican Party to default to the way it was in two thousand four, two thousand five.
Uh the Tea Party movement chose to work within the zombie husk of the Republican Party this time round.
Uh 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 re and we have to remember that.
It's vitally important.
Uh let us go to Steve in State College, Pennsylvania.
Steve, you're alive on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Great to have you with us.
And uh a belated Merry Christmas from one ex-patriot Canadian to another.
Where are you from in 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 uh murders down by the roadboard.
All right.
I'm laughing about what's going on in New York City.
And and uh I want to you probably remember January 1999 when Toronto Mayor Mel Lassman called out the army because the blizzard that the 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 uh, you know, the the city was was cleared.
Uh 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.
They're 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 uh they'd be reassigned to uh Albany to go through sensitivity training uh when they got there, and then they wouldn't get their payment uh for uh eighteen 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 equip uh highway equipment.
The Army do not have the training that, for example, the New York State Transportation and Sanitation Department guys have in operating snow plows.
True enough.
Yet plowing, plowing, I know this, like many people do in New Hampshire.
Actually, plowing isn't that difficult.
And suddenly shoveling and operating snowblowers isn't that difficult.
Uh 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 uh shoveling and operating snowblowers on on the sidewalks of Fifth Avenue?
People are walking in the tire tracks of the streets of Manhattan's main boulevards, uh, because Mayor Bloomberg's bureaucracy has uh has taken the week off.
And that's that's the lesson.
That's the the the the lesson that Mayor Lassman understood in Toronto that for some reason, no matter how big a government, uh how mu uh big a government bureaucracy is, in the end that for some reason when something bad happens, they don't instinctively kick into gear.
They say they look out the window, the the guy from the Bureau of Compliance draws his curtains in the morning and sees it's snowing, and he doesn't say, Oh, well, uh, I'm a I'm a uh a member of city government.
I need to get out there and start working for the the people who uh 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 uh big government, Steve, and sadly uh that's as true as it is north of the border as it is so south of the border.
But did do you get anything in state college, by the way?
I have not got a flake on the ground here.
In fact, uh I find that very hard to believe given the way people vote in Pennsylvania Brown right now.
Really?
And not uh honest to God, we drove back from Toronto on on Boxing Day, had some snow uh in northern Pennsylvania, no problems driving, and got back here 10 30 at night, and there were there's literally not a flake on the ground in fact.
I think it's the army today.
The Amish cleared it while you were while you were in Toronto on Boxing Day, the Amish cleared the state for you.
They do it.
They get out there in the horse and buggy, it's all gone by five in the morning.
That's that's what that's that 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 Sabali Wardlord.
Fuad Mohammed Shongoli Kalaf said in his radio message that U.S. President Barack Obama must convert to Islam or Somalia's Al Shabab militia would launch attacks in the United States.
They could conceivably be behind this huge snowfall that has uh devastated uh 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 Anthax.
Could be Anfax.
I think we need an investigation.
But uh Obama must convert to Islam, says uh Fwad Mohammed Shongoli Calaf, Somali warlord, direct from Mogadishu Radio, where uh the radio reception uh functioning radio communications are almost as uh big a technological challenge as they are here in northern New Hampshire.
Let's go to Rob in Long Island, New York, where uh the island isn't really that long, it just seems that long to get anywhere on it, thanks to the way the cities uh and the island is run.
Rob, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Hey, Mark, how are you?
Greeting.
I'm good.
How are you?
Good.
Greetings from the state that have to raise taxes uh from nine hundred million to four and a half billion by two thousand and fifteen to maintain teacher pensions, assuming an eight percent return on investment, and add on another four billion for that for the policemen and firefighters.
Right.
Uh for the taxpayers.
Now, do you do you work in the private sector, Rob?
Yes.
What are you, nuts?
I mean, why?
Why why would you work in the private sector in the state of New York?
In the in the state of New York, you should be a school teacher or or with the Department of Snowplowing or whatever, and you'll retire at 52 on a fabulous pension, uh, and uh some other suckers will pay for it.
Isn't that how it works?
Well, yeah, you were on a rant about the uh issue of Belt California.
I want to remind your listeners here in New York, we've got uh Frank DeSone, who with some other folks uh conspired to steal 11 million dollars.
Did he was a superintendent of a school, did seven months in jail, comes out, gets his pension.
174,000 a year the rest of his life.
Right you and I haven't save uh say four or five million dollars if he lives for thirty years.
Right.
But I really called you about health care.
That's what I do professionally.
Okay.
And okay, that was uh that was an artful segue there.
I hardly noticed the change of topic, but uh make your make your health care point, Rob.
Well, both of them will hopefully help uh create more jobs in New York for the 25-year-old who's got a $30,000 student loan.
Um, 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, uh sundry things that you would think nothing of paying these services for your car, but you you don't know what these average charges are.
Um and they have to be done quickly because the rates are exploding across my desk.
I got about fifty notices from a certain carrier that's telling me, hey, next October, eleven months from now, we're playing to seek increases of twenty-seven to sixty-seven percent uh increases on your clients.
And you're 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 uh insurers taking care of if you went if you went to the movie.
If you went to the movie theater, you wouldn't care whether it was nine dollars for the ticket or ninety dollars or nine thousand dollars for the ticket.
All you care is that the third party gives you access to it, and that's why health care costs uh are exploding, and that's why government is using the exploding health care costs as a pretext for a government takeover.
Mark Stein in for us on the EIB network.
The inaugural edition of the Rush Limbaugh Show, live from Ice Station EIB in Northern New Hampshire.
Thanks to Mr. Snerdley and all the gang in uh Palm Beach and New York, and to uh Tiffany and Melissa uh here in New Hampshire, the best pals of Flatlander ever had.
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