Rush Limbaugh Program - January 3, 2011, Monday, Hour #3

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Jan. 3, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program

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January 3, 2011, Monday, Hour #3

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	Yes, America's Anchorman returns tomorrow, live at 12 noon Eastern to kick off another year of excellence in broadcasting.
	But this is America's undocumented anchorman sitting in.
	Mark Stein, great to be with you direct from IceStation EIB, the Rush Limbaugh Show's newest studio in far northern Grafton County, New Hampshire.
	They're going to have to get a whole new set of business cards.
	It's going to have to say the EIB network, New York, Los Angeles, Palm Beach, Grafton County, New Hampshire.
	It'll look great.
	Actually, I would say, given the state of New York and the city of New York's attitude to Rush and the punitive taxation Governor Patterson was gloating about that had driven Rush out of the state of New York, I would say there's probably more chance of Rush hosting the show from New Hampshire than there is from New York anytime soon.
	It's a big studio, too.
	I mentioned the other day that on next year's Christmas show, we can get Rush and Mannheim Steamroller in here live to play his favorite version of Silent Night here live.
	Public sector workers, the cost of government, where it's driving America.
	We've been talking about that on today's show.
	1-800-282-2882, there's a heartwarming story.
	This will clutch at your heartstrings.
	From the New York Times, public workers face outrage as budget crises grow.
	It's about a teacher called Mary Caulfield from Flemington, New Jersey, who confronted Governor, hard-hearted Governor Chris Christie over the state's education cuts.
	It became a YouTube classic.
	But since then, she's received a stream of vituperative emails and Facebook postings.
	People I don't even know are calling me horrible names, said Miss Caulfield, an art teacher who had pleaded the case of struggling teachers.
	The mantra is that the problem is the unions, the unions, the unions.
	What do you mean struggling teachers?
	What do you mean struggling teachers?
	You've got a better deal than almost anybody else among your neighbors.
	And yet you say teachers are struggling.
	If you think you're struggling, what do you think the guy who owns the hardware store is doing?
	Or the guy who works in the hardware store?
	Or the guy who does the night shift at the Quickie Crap ExpressMart?
	What do you think they're like?
	You have a better deal.
	You'll retire earlier with more money.
	You get more vacation.
	You get better health care.
	You get better benefits.
	In what sense compared to your neighbors?
	Your neighbors?
	We're just talking about the people who live in the same suburban cul-de-sac as you.
	You're the same town as you.
	In what sense are you struggling compared to them?
	This lady, Marie Caulfield, the art teacher from Flemington, New Jersey.
	People I don't even know are calling me horrible names.
	Well, now you know what it's like to be an insurance executive or a bank vice president or all the other people that Barney Frank demonized beginning in the fall of 2008.
	All the guys that the Democrats told, hey, we're the only people standing between you and the pitchforks.
	Well, maybe the guys with the pitchforks are figuring it out, that the real threat here is not some bank vice president at some stupid bank that's sitting on a trillion dollars worth of toxic subprime mortgages.
	But the real threat here is public sector unions with pensions and benefit packages that are in fact beyond accountable political control.
	They're effectively chiseled into granite.
	You can't even pass a law repealing them because they're there.
	They're done.
	They're a done deal.
	They're a deal for all time.
	You can't get a court to overturn them.
	Can't elect a legislature to overturn them.
	All you can do is appeal to the public spirit of so-called public sector unions to recognize that they're dragging the rest of the country down into the pit.
	The cost of we now have, we now have too small a private sector horse to pull the big government cart.
	It's not that difficult to figure out.
	These guys are simply too big, too cosseted, and too insulated from economic reality.
	So Marie Caulfield perhaps quite genuinely thinks that teachers are struggling.
	Teachers are struggling.
	Well, sorry.
	You signed on to deals that are unsupportable and that in many jurisdictions, when voters figure the electoral math is against them, as they do in California, they leave.
	They abandon the state.
	Private sector, the dynamic Californians, flee that state and they leave what's left in the state to undocumented workers and public sector unions and all the rest of it.
	And those guys can all scratch each other's back and in the end they'll figure out that there's no one to pay for it all.
	You know, there used to be an old saying, he who pays the piper calls the tune.
	Well, the taxpayers of New Jersey pay the piper of the teachers' union, but they don't get to call the tune.
	They pay more and more and more and they don't get to call the tune.
	And what you're doing there is setting up pre-revolutionary conditions.
	You look at the riots that they've had in Greece, the riots they've had in France, in Britain, in other European countries.
	At the moment, these riots are from people who basically are on the big government happy juice and don't want it to end.
	But at a certain point, that will change.
	That will change.
	And the people who are expected to pay for those guys to just sit around on the big government happy juice, those guys will start rioting too, and then you'll be in civil war type scenarios.
	In Greece, the public sector unions, if you've got a public sector union job, you work till 2.30 in the afternoon.
	And you work about five and a half months of the year.
	The old joke, you know, oh, he works 24-7.
	He works 24 hours a week for seven months of the year.
	That doesn't even apply.
	You can't even do that joke about Greek public sector workers anymore because they actually work less than that.
	So what we have here is an unsustainable system.
	And that's what people like Marie Caulfield don't seem to acknowledge, even if you think it's a good idea, even if you think it's a good idea that the teachers' union does such a terrific job, that it's worth paying them more than every other developed country pays its teachers, that it's worth paying, we spend more on education than any other OECD nation other than Luxembourg.
	I mentioned this when we had Shannon the Educator on the show.
	Shannon the Educator.
	I'm surprised, by the way, they describe in the New York Times, they describe Marie Caulfield as a teacher, because most self-respecting teachers now want to be called educators, educators.
	We had Shannon the Educator on, who seemed to think that the problems in the country would be cured by actually giving the education system more money.
	No, we already give the education system more money per student than any other OECD nation except Luxembourg, which is a tiny little country you can fit in your rec room.
	A tiny, wealthy little country that will fit in your basement.
	We spend more than anybody else.
	We have nothing to show for it.
	And yet Marie Caulfield says teachers are struggling and we need more.
	No, we don't.
	We need non-unionized teachers.
	We need non-credential teachers.
	We need more volunteer fire departments rather than public sector unionized fire departments because this whole racket is unsustainable, cannot be sustained.
	Now, we were talking earlier with John of Pinehurst, North Carolina, who wants to know what happens when it can no longer be sustained.
	With money drains power.
	You can't let the Chinese own as much American debt as they currently own without also letting them, in fact, mortgaging to them a big chunk of American power.
	Jonathan Swift, they have our soul who have our bonds.
	The Chinese have our bonds, so to a certain degree, they have our souls.
	About half of U.S. debt is owned by foreigners, and about half of that is owned by the Chinese.
	What does that mean?
	Well, even if your debt is owned by friendly powers, they determine, they essentially determine the power relationship.
	You go back to the last transfer of power from one global hegemon to another.
	That was Britain to America in the course of the Second World War when FDR agreed to the Lend-Lease Program.
	That was about as friendly a transfer of power from one anglophone nation to another, to its successor, to its errant progeny, returning as a prodigal son to assume global leadership.
	That was the most friendly transfer of power in global history.
	And the deal stank for Britain.
	Lend-lease, which the British thought of as a financial arrangement when they signed on to it at the beginning of the Second World War, by the time they paid off the final payment at Christmas 2006, by the time they paid off the final installment of the Lend-Lease debt to the United States government, they understood that it was not just money that had drained to the successor power, but power and influence too.
	And the Chinese understand that already.
	So they are going to determine the point at which the American dollar ceases to be the global currency will be determined by China.
	China is not a powerful nation.
	It's got all screwed up problems of its own.
	It has millions and millions of surplus young men.
	It's going to get old before it gets rich.
	China is in a huge mess.
	But precisely because of that, its interests do not align with the United States.
	And when it chooses to yank the rug, it will be entirely predictable, and we will all be stunned by it.
	And that is why the new 112th Congress doesn't have to talk about raising the debt ceiling or introducing VAT or finding more ways to put its hands in your pocket and take more money for more useless programs.
	What it has to do is stop spending.
	What it has to do is reel in spending.
	What it has to do is tell states there will be no state bailouts, and those states have to tell their municipalities there'll be no municipal bailouts.
	Because the cost, the cost in terms of sheer civil violence and instability is going to get greater and greater the longer and longer this goes on.
	You can't have Marie in Flemington, New Jersey, like all public school teachers, retiring at an early age and a fantastic salary, and the guy who pays her salary and the guy who pays her pension and the guy who pays her benefit and has the misfortune to own a small business on Main Street, working till he drops dead without any vacation just to pay for the so-called struggling teachers of the New Jersey Teachers Union.
	So the feds have to get serious about spending and they have to make it plain the realities of the situation to the states and the states have to make the realities of the situation plain to the municipalities.
	Because if the 112th Congress doesn't make the decisions on this stuff, then there are guys sitting around in the presidential palaces of the world, most of which are not friendly to U.S. interests, sitting around plotting how to make the decisions in the finance ministry in Beijing and other places as well.
	1-800-282-2882-Mark Stein, Infra Rush.
	If you want my body and you think I'm sexy, I love, I love that.
	Love Rod Stewart in his disco mode before he started doing the Rod Stewart Slaughters, the Great American Songbook stuff.
	Do you know that was Mullah Omar's I think that was Mullah Omar's favorite record when the American troops raided Mullah Omar's compound in Kandahar?
	You remember under the Taliban, music was banned in Afghanistan.
	But when American troops, because music is decadent, you're not, a Taliban Muller recently clarified the Taliban's position on music, which says Allah doesn't forbid you to listen to music.
	He just forbids you to enjoy it.
	So if you've heard my Christmas album, for example, you'll know that's fully Taliban compliant.
	But when the U.S. troops raided Mullah Omar's compound in Kandahar, they discovered that despite forbidding music anywhere else in Afghanistan, he had all these eight tracks from Rod Stewart.
	Mullah Omar, the one-eyed Muller, had been bouncing around the room listening to If You Want My Body and You Think I'm Sexy.
	I don't know whether he did it in private or in front of his four wives and then invited them to compete for him.
	But at any rate, that was the big disco hit in Mullah Omar's compound.
	If you want my body and you think I'm sexy.
	Speaking of sexy bodies, the newly empowered House GOP has introduced a rules package for the 112th Congress that will prohibit former members of Congress who are currently registered lobbyists from using the gym.
	I'm glad to see they're tackling the key issues, the priorities facing this country.
	So if you're a registered lobbyist who was previously a congressman, you can no longer use the congressional gym because congressional congress type persons don't want to be, when they're on the exercise bike, they don't want to be pestered by lobbyists.
	So you're not allowed to.
	When you're working out in the gym, when Nancy Pelosi is in there in her thong and her sports bra, she doesn't want to be pestered by some lobbyist coming in and attempting to lobby her on something.
	So this is a sign, I think, of the new broom in Washington.
	The 112th Congress was already cracking down on lobbying, on letting lobbyists use the House gym.
	I'm glad to see they've got their priorities.
	Did you know the 111th Congress, by the way, added more debt than the first 100 Congresses combined?
	The total national debt accumulated a whole $3.22 trillion during the tenure of the 111th Congress.
	And that is more.
	That is more than was stacked up by the first 100 Congresses in U.S. history.
	That's the terrific spending they did.
	And I love the way Obama likes to talk about how George still likes to talk about how George W. Bush dug us into this hole so that the only way he can dig us out of the hole is to make the hole three times as deep.
	So eventually we'll come out somewhere in Australia or New Zealand and we can get out of the hole as long as we just keep digging and digging and digging and digging.
	That's the Democrats' method.
	Let's go to Scott in Springfield, Ohio.
	Scott, you are live on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
	Great to have you with us.
	Hey, Mark.
	You're my most favorite undocumented host for Rush Limbaugh.
	I just want you to know that.
	Oh, I think that's damning with faint praise because I'm pretty certain Mark Belling has the paperwork.
	So that is kind of damning with faint praise, but I'll take it.
	I'm so desperate, I'll take that anyway.
	Great to have you with us, and a happy new year to you.
	Happy New Year, YouTube.
	I'm just wondering why President Obama just signed off on this $5 billion first responders health care bill whenever we just signed off on a trillion-dollar Obamacare last year that's supposed to be covered in pre-existing conditions.
	Yes, it doesn't quite make sense.
	And even when you talk about pre-existing conditions, by the way, we're talking with this 9-11 bill, which is one reason why some of us had difficulty understanding it, is that these guys have the best healthcare packages in the country anyway, the first responders.
	But as you say, you're right.
	Why do we need to find another $5 billion when there's all this unspent money both from Obamacare and even more so from the stimulus?
	The stimulus, which was passed in whatever it was, January 2009, was supposed to stimulate the economy in the first quarter of 2009, two years ago.
	And there's still a big bunch of money that's entirely unspent from that because there were no shovel-ready projects.
	The shovel-ready project was a myth.
	So as you say, why couldn't we take the $5 billion for that and use it for the first responders bill?
	What's your thinking on that, Scott?
	Well, I think exactly what you were talking about before.
	These unions needs the money.
	And they made these promises on these healthcare union deals, and they figured now they'd get the government to pay for it instead of them.
	Now that money that they're getting from their union dues is going right back to the politicians that passed this program.
	Yeah, it's a very cozy relationship.
	But it's also, you know, I'll tell you something else too.
	The reason they don't want to use the stimulus money on the health care bill is because the stimulus money is also another variation of the racket.
	The stimulus money essentially doesn't go to stimulate the economy.
	It goes to stimulate government.
	If you look at almost any area where stimulus money has been concentrated, then it's gone to stimulate phony baloney non-jobs by Obama's fellow community organizers.
	For example, there was something called, I saw this full-page ad, the Southeast Vermont Community Association, something like that, in Vermont when the stimulus bill passed.
	And it listed all the fantastic new jobs that were now available thanks to the stimulus.
	And the first one was the ARA projects coordinator.
	So in other words, the first job created by the stimulus was a job for coordinating other programs funded by the stimulus.
	The next job was a marketing specialist to increase public awareness of the stimulus.
	So all stimulus money does is stimulate stimulus promotion activities.
	Stimulus coordination industry, the stimulus funding industry are all oomphed up.
	But nowhere in the real economy is stimulated by Obama's phony baloney stimulus.
	Yes, America's anchor man is away, but worry not, he will return tomorrow, live at 12 midday.
	And in the meantime, if you go to rushlimbore.com, if you're a Rush 24-7 subscriber, it's like he never went away because you can access all that great Rush content on your schedule.
	And you can also find out about the new Rush app, which was released, I think, just a few days before Christmas.
	On its very first day, it became the best-selling app in Apple's store.
	And so immediately the federal government then rushed in with the FCC to regulate apps as part of its regulation of the internet.
	But it's a terrific thing.
	It's free.
	And what it means is, if you're a Rush 24-7 subscriber, you'll be able to watch Rush live on the DittoCam from your iPhone or iPad.
	You'll be able to hear the Rush morning update.
	You can see video from Rush's TV show back in the 90s.
	You can email Rush directly.
	All you've got to do is either go to rushlimbore.com, and we've got all the info on the app right there at the website, or if you go to the Apple store and enter the word Rush, then you will get you'll be able to download it directly from Apple.
	Don't forget, though, as we warned in the first hour, that if you do break the Rush app, if the Rush app breaks, then it is like the Curly Fry light bulb.
	And you do need to have with you a pack of playing cards, two canning jars, a small artist's paintbrush, and an eyedropper with you to help clear up the mess if you do break your Rush app on your iPad.
	But you can find out all about it by going to RushLimbore.com or going direct to the Apple store.
	Let's go to Joe in Dallas.
	Joe, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh show.
	Great to have you with us.
	Hello, Mark.
	Hi, Joe.
	You're one of my favorite substitutes for Rush Limbaugh.
	Oh, I think that's damning fainter praise than the guy who said I was the favorite undocumented host.
	But I'll take that faint praise.
	There isn't any other kind for poor old me.
	I wanted to talk about how you mentioned earlier that in Hungary and other parts of Europe, they're seizing pension funds.
	Right.
	Well, here in Dallas, something has been quite an issue relating to pension funds.
	The city council recently voted to cut the percentage of it from like eight to down to like seven or six percent, which I think is kind of a little similar, but it's not the same as seizing them, but they're still taking money from like workers like the police department and fire department.
	Yeah, because they have a funding problem now, and they cannot honor their obligations.
	Exactly.
	I mean, the city council has spent half a billion dollars on a hotel which a lot of the people here didn't want, but somehow it got approved by the voters.
	Yeah, but you know, you want to think about this because that's exactly what is going on basically not just in Dallas, not just in Washington, but throughout the Western world, is that the government refuses to rein in the spending.
	And what they need then is to drag in more and more sources to prop up the spending just for another year, just for another month, just for another 48 hours.
	And the idea that somehow you will be, any of us, whether we're private or public sector workers, will be able to hedge off our particular deals from government because government, the IRS, can already freeze your bank account and your kids' bank account and anybody else's bank account the moment it wants to.
	So they've already got the powers to do this stuff.
	And you make the right point that instead of saying, well, wait a minute, maybe we should cut the transsexual performance art outreach supervisor.
	Maybe that job isn't as necessary as we once thought.
	Police and fire benefits, by the way, these guys do have terrific packages.
	But you know, I would bet one, I would make a wager with you that one of the first things that will be cut back in the years to come in America as this crisis starts to bite deeper and deeper in municipalities is meaningful police services.
	So in other words, they'll still have bureaucrats sitting around precinct houses shuffling paperwork, but they'll have fewer and fewer cops out there on your particular street.
	You will be like most suburban cul-de-sacs will find themselves in the situation of Baghdad outside the green zone.
	Inside the green zone, inside the precinct house, bureaucrats will be shuffling paperwork, but they will be cutting back on core law and order policing services To people in first in outlying streets and then, you know, as much as they can get away with, just like they do, just like they're already doing in cities like Detroit, which has a huge murder rate, a huge government, huge murder rate, huge number of bureaucrats,
	but nobody manages to hook up the huge government and the huge number of bureaucrats to do anything about the huge murder rate.
	So, what you're seeing, Joe, in Dallas and St. Louis and all kinds of other places is the first glimpse of the future, that government would rather cut back core functions such as law and order than cut back on, as you said in Dallas, the new hotel, or as I suggested, you know, the transsexual community outreach officer.
	They will cut back on core services long before they cut back on any of the wasteful stuff.
	Or do you think I'm wrong on that, Joe?
	No, I don't think you're wrong on that.
	It's just I'm surprised that they would do that because I'm pretty sure they don't know the risk that if they cut spending for like the police department and fire department, they're opening themselves up more for riots in the streets and such, and eventually it'll reach their footsteps and they'll be in danger.
	Yeah, but you know something?
	You know the way to think about this, Joe, is you often see that, take it from an old school imperialist.
	If you'd happened to be in Aden, which is now part of Yemen, 40 years ago, just before, in the late 1960s, before the British packed it in and basically was succeeded by a communist People's Republic, the colonial administration was holed up in its headquarters, ventured out in armored trucks ever more rarely and ever more fiercely protected on ever more cautious routes where it wasn't at risk.
	And you will see a lot of that in you already see it in Detroit, really, where Detroit is a good example.
	It's gone beyond Latin America and it's actually resembled some of the more feral parts of failed states these days.
	You'll see a lot more of that in the years ahead.
	Let's go to Charlie, who is on I-70 in Kansas.
	Seeing a lot of that, hey, hey, you've got a lot of that stimulus money smoothing out your roadway there on I-70.
	I sure do.
	But there's still a little snow on here, so apparently it didn't make it to the plows.
	Hey, your comment earlier while I was on hold, I heard you talk about Ezra Klein and his comment about being confused about documents that were over 100 years old.
	And I have to say, that sure did go a lot a long way in explaining the left-wing intelligentsia's utter contempt toward Christianity, which is based on documentation that's what, 20 to 40 times more than 100 years old?
	Yeah, that's true, Charlie.
	On the other hand, they don't seem to have any problem with the Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and the Communist Manifesto, which is, well, was that written in 1848, I think?
	That's true.
	There's a little bit of selectivity going on in these things.
	But you're right.
	But it is, I think, actually, you know, a contempt for, a real contempt for the past.
	What's fascinating about that remark is the assumption behind it that there are no enduring principles, that somehow the fact that something is old is ipso facto proof of its obsolescence.
	That was very revealing to me, Charlie.
	Absolutely.
	My comment, Mark, was playing off of your theme of the pansy left.
	You know, the natural outcome of the policies of the pansy left is at best a lack of consumer choice and at worst, an increase in consumer death.
	You can look at cafe standards in cars that make them more deadly.
	And you can even look at, You know, from a consumer choice standpoint, you can look at the business I used to be in, which was financial services, that every time we came out with something that was really good for the consumers that they liked and they were actually willing to pay for, somebody to do good, you know, quote unquote, for the consumer, somebody from the government came and said we had to offer that for free.
	And so our natural inclination then was to say, well, we can't lose money at this, so we pull the product.
	So the natural process of the do-gooder pansy left is to limit consumer choice and actually kill the consumers with the limited choice that they have.
	Yeah, and as you put it, they artificially interfere in it.
	I was reading a marvelous rant by George Harrison of all people a few decades ago, which began by referencing, you know, Kodak's Kodak's monopoly in film.
	Well, you know, the market solved that problem.
	Somebody came along and came up with digital photography, and now Kodachrome, I think it just happened last week, the last Kodachrome production facility closed down.
	If government had interfered in that, we would still all be shooting film with Kodak Instematics, and it would be developed by unionized, regulated workforce, and it would take you four weeks to get your holiday photographs back from the Kodak Instastatist-Matics Development Lab.
	But left to the market, the Kodak monopoly faded away because somebody invented something that was better than it.
	And as you say, governmentalization of that just shrivels choice and imposes more costs.
	Thank you for your call, Charlie, on I-70 in Kansas.
	I don't know whether if you were listening with the speakers up loud, it sounded like some motorcycle cop just drove into his passenger seat about midway through that call.
	I hope it didn't.
	And I hope he's an obliging fellow if he did.
	Mark Stein Infra Rush, lots more to come.
	Mark Stein Infra Rush on the EIB network.
	I've just had a listener email me to say that apparently in the last segment I said that police and firefighters, these guys do have terrific packages.
	And he demanded to know quite what it was.
	I was trying to say with that.
	Come on, man, give me a break.
	I was talking about Nancy Pelosi in a thong in the segment before that.
	So if that's not the hallmark of a red-blooded heterosexual male, I don't know what is.
	There's no need to suggest I've got something when I'm going on about the terrific packages of firemen.
	Give me a break, man.
	Mark Stein Infra Rush.
	We were talking about this business of Ezra Klein, the Justin Bieber of the Washington Post, saying that the Constitution is over 100 years old, nobody can understand it.
	This idea that the left has that there are no timeless principles.
	In fact, generally speaking, the facts of life reassert themselves with numbing predictability every time.
	I was just talking earlier about how Britain's decline, like America, started with the money, started with debt.
	It always does.
	The French monarchy, the House of Bourbon in the year 1688, I think debt as a percentage of GDP was something like 66.5% or something, something like that, 65%, 70%.
	And we know how that worked out for the House of Bourbon the following year, the French Revolution, 1789, and all the rest of it.
	Generally speaking, there are timeless principles.
	Great powers decline for the same reasons and for the same numbingly predictable reasons every time.
	So it would do the Justin Biebers of the left a little bit of good occasionally to look at something from the old musty Cindy Lauper era of quill pens and complicated old-timey English.
	Because the timeless principles assert themselves time and again.
	Let's go to Ray in southern Illinois.
	Ray, you're live on the Russian Embosshow.
	Great to have you with us.
	Hey, great show.
	I've really enjoyed listening to you.
	Thanks.
	What's on your mind, Ray?
	There was something you were talking about before about Menard Correctional Center and the laws.
	Yeah, that's right.
	That's right, where everyone's come down with the repetitive stress syndrome.
	Well, there's a few things that happen there.
	One of them is Menard's one of the oldest prisons, and they still use the big Folger Adams keys.
	They're as big as your hand.
	Now, just a minute.
	Just a minute, though.
	When you say it's one of the older prisons, how old is it?
	Well, I think it's maybe the oldest in the state now.
	So what does that mean?
	100 years old?
	I'm not sure, so I can't really tell you.
	Well, you know, I'm in a 120-year-old building.
	I live in a building that's over 200 years old.
	I'm very struck by this.
	Do you remember when the president was going on about Tyshioma Bethea, the schoolgirl from South Carolina, who complained about peeling paint in her classrooms and trains rattling by the window?
	And the press all reported this as saying the building was over 100 years old.
	And in fact, the building, the part of the building that is over 100 years old, is actually not used for classrooms.
	It was used for the school superintendent.
	And the building that Tyshioma Bethaya is actually educated in was fully remodeled in the 1980s.
	In other words, the problem here, there are sometimes problems with old buildings.
	They're sometimes caused by new building codes that government imposes on old buildings.
	So if you've got an old high school, you have to drop the ceiling to put the ugly ceiling tiles in because the government has got all kinds of regulations on the height of ceilings in classrooms now.
	So if you've got an old schoolhouse, that can cause a problem.
	But they managed, the guys who were operating these jail cells in the Edward G. Robinson, Jimmy Cagney public enemy era were able to turn those keys.
	In other words, maybe if dealing with prison cell doors that previous generations of American prison guards were able to deal with is now a cause of dramatic illness and getting you all kinds of $10 million settlements from the state, maybe that is a sign not of the decrepitude of the building, but of the decrepitude of American citizenship.
	Because the idea that somehow, to take the Ezra Klein view, that simply because something is old, it has to be replaced, is going to be the death of this country, whether you're talking about the Constitution or whether you're talking about every single building in the United States.
	Most of us, most of us, manage to get by living and working in old buildings.
	And that goes for prisons too, whether they date from the Jimmy Cagney era or not.
	There may be repetitive stress issues, but repetitive stress issues for 400 guys, including the warden who doesn't actually open these cell doors himself, sounds more like some kind of statist racket to me.
	Mark Stein, in for rush.
	More in a moment.
	Mark Stein, in for rush on the EIB network.
	You know, we were talking about Ezra Klein at the Washington Post claiming the Constitution is confusing because it's over 100 years old.
	A listener, Jim, from Reston, Virginia, suggests that Ezra Klein should be asked to take the following test.
	He should read the six pages of the Constitution, be asked what it means, and then told to read the 2,000 pages of Obamacare Act or any six pages of it and explain to us what that means, because that's far more confusing and it's not written in the old-timey English.
	I've had a great time over this Christmas and New Year season, but the lame duck session of the Rush Limbaugh Show is finally drawing to a close, and the genuine article, The Real Thing, returns to the Golden EIB microphone live at 12 midday Eastern tomorrow.

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