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March 23, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
32:15
March 23, 2011, Wednesday, Hour #3
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I asked some questions out there just before the end of the previous hour.
On Libya, where is Secretary Colin Powell or General Colin Powell?
He said of Iraq, you break it, you own it.
That's a Powell doctrine.
Where is Powell on Libya?
Has Powell been on CNN today?
Or why has he not been on CNN earlier this week to discuss all this?
Hiya, folks.
Rush Limbaugh.
Yeah, I know Colonel Powell, it was Reagan that made him a four-star general.
Hell, he knows more.
Gaddafi's been a colonel for 46 years.
And the thing about that is that Gaddafi could promote himself and hasn't.
He must like the way it looks when it's written or like the way it sounds.
Colonel Gaddafi.
He must be into alliteration.
Probably think it sounds better than General Gaddafi, Major General, Sergeant Major, Admiral Gaddafi.
Now, I am told that General Powell has been speaking out.
Well, Obama's Libya attack fails every point of the so-called Powell doctrine.
The Powell Doctrine, you will recall, has three main precepts.
Avoid mission creep, clearly define your goals, and plan an exit strategy before you go in.
And Obama's Liquid Dawn, whatever it's, what is this Liquid Dawn, I think is the name of the operation?
Operation?
Oh, Odyssey Dawn.
I thought it was Liquid Dawn.
I thought it was named of a dishwater detergent.
Whatever.
It fails.
And where is Powell?
Maybe we should have, where is Mrs. Powell?
This is a female operation.
There is Mrs. Colonel Powell.
Speaking of.
Whoa.
How are you, folks?
Wonderful to have you here.
Rush Limbaugh and the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Telephone number if you want to join us.
800-282-2882.
And the email address, Lrushbaugh at EIBnet.com.
We had a couple Chris Christie soundbites.
He was on the Ask the Governor show radio last night, took it to a caller named Penny, who didn't understand why she was going to have to pay for some of her health care with the state being in debt.
A story here from the Asbury Park Press.
New Jersey's burgeoning numbers of poor and nearly poor show the need for government to provide more help, more care, more protection to its suffering residents, according to a report on poverty issued yesterday.
The report made public by the Poverty Research Institute of Legal Services of New Jersey says that nearly 2 million residents, more than the combined populations of Boston, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, are either in poverty or hovering on the edge of the federal threshold for poverty.
So what they're saying is that we have three whole cities worth of poor people in New Jersey, in one state.
I'm struck here.
Among the most affected, who do you think is hardest hit here?
That's right.
Children, women, the elderly, African Americans, Hispanics, and single mothers.
The Coalition of the Screwed.
These are the people that are constantly suffering the most in America.
The coalition of the screwed, women, children, the elderly, African Americans, Hispanics, and single mothers.
Now, just stop for a second and think about a culture that embraces, supports, and encourages strong families with a father and mother and see if you find them in the midst of the coalition of the screwed.
I mean, I hate to be so blunt about it.
Now, Asbury Park, New Jersey is the home of the Barack H. Obama school that is being closed due to lack of students.
Oh, you didn't hear about that?
Asbury Park, New Jersey, the Barack H. Obama School.
They're shutting it down.
Lack of students.
It was just announced last week.
It's an elementary school.
Anyway, if you believe these numbers, poverty level is defined by the federal government, $10,400 single person, $14,000 for a couple, $17,600 for a family of three, $21,200 family four.
That's poverty level.
If there are nearly 2 million people in New Jersey living near poverty, what more can be done the way we're doing it?
I mean, this bunch is demanding more government.
New Jersey's burgeoning numbers of poor and nearly poor show the need for government to provide more help, more care, more protection to its suffering residents.
What in the world has the war on poverty been?
We're in debt helping people.
We're $14 trillion in debt helping people.
New Jersey, $67 billion in debt helping people.
What have we not done?
What's the transfer of wealth that's already taken place?
It's going to be $8 trillion since the Great Society?
What more could we do?
At what point does a person's lot in life become their responsibility?
At what point?
But here you have, and isn't it interesting while all this is happening, these reports come out as Christie, in a lot of people's mind, is just kicking butt out there.
Every time he opens his mouth, he's scoring points.
Republican presidential wannabes apparently are flying into New Jersey to talk to him, almost as though getting his stamp of approval.
He's saying he's not ready to run yet, but nobody's really quite sure whether he means it or not.
But clearly there's a lot of interest in him.
He is scoring a lot of points with people, and all of a sudden he's presiding over a state that doesn't care about people.
According to this report, New Jersey's burgeoning numbers of poor and nearly poor show the need for government to provide more help, more care.
How can there be any more care?
How can there be any more help?
At what point does a person's lot in life become their responsibility?
Not supposed to ask that question, folks.
We are not supposed to ask that.
But this coalition of the screwed, children, women, elderly, African Americans, Hispanics, single mothers.
How many of the families that are strong, father and mother, are in this coalition of the screwed?
I think there might be some cultural reasons here, folks, rather than the fact that government doesn't care enough.
Here's another story on New Jersey.
This is from the Newark Star Ledger.
Christie's budget cuts left New Jersey schools unable to provide thorough and efficient education, according to a judge.
Governor Chris Christie's deep cuts to state school aid last year left New Jersey screws unable to provide a thorough and efficient education to the state's nearly 1.4 million screw children, according to Superior Court Judge Peter Doyne.
Doyne was appointed as a special master in the long-running Abbott versus Burke scruel funding case, issued an opinion that also found the reductions fell more heavily upon high-risk districts and the children educated within those districts.
Despite spending levels that meet or exceed virtually every state in the country and that saw a significant increase in spending levels from 2000 to 2008, our at-risk children are now moving further from proficiency.
So, what is he saying here?
The story says Christie's budget cuts left schools unable to provide thorough and efficient education.
What, by the way, what's that?
What is a thorough and efficient education?
Judge gets to define that, I guess.
But the story says it's budget cuts.
The judge is ruling, despite spending levels that meet or exceed virtually every state in the country and that saw a significant increase in spending levels from 2000 to 2008.
Our at-risk children are now moving further from proficiency.
Well, what are we to do?
Doesn't sound like their budget cuts.
It sounds like we're spending more than ever before.
We're spending more than every state in the country.
Education is not thorough and not efficient because of Christie's budget cuts.
There are 591 school districts in New Jersey.
Not 592 and not 590.
591.
2,400 schools in the state of New Jersey.
Might that be a problem?
Or at least contributory to the problem?
But regardless, the long knives are out for Governor Christie on this.
I mean, this is nonsensical.
We're spending more than we ever have, exceed virtually every state in the country.
Spending levels, significant increased 2000 to 2008, and yet the headline budget cuts left schools unable to provide thorough and efficient education.
Again, at what point is someone's education their responsibility?
At what point do we rename the coalition of the screwed the coalition of the willingly screwed?
At what point?
I feel sorry for these people, and we've been feeling sorry for them for 40 or 50 years now.
And what's that accomplished?
One of the things I always ask myself during periods like this: story after story after story of endless poverty, endless suffering, and yet down the street, there isn't any.
On that part of town and many, many other parts of town, there isn't any.
Why?
What is the reason for the disparity?
Yeah, don't give it as life's lottery as unfair business.
That's what the Democrats want you.
That's, of course, the underpinning theory behind redistribution.
Many factors involved.
Entitlement.
I am expected that this should be given me or what have you.
Lack of properly motivated people, inspired people, educated people.
Understanding the difference, misunderstanding the difference between empathy and sympathy.
The war on poverty is sympathy.
The great society is sympathy.
Helping people help themselves is empathy.
You know, teaching a man to fish, that is empathy.
But we have a sympathy-based foreign policy.
We just feel sorry for everybody.
Feel sorry for them and then come up with policies to make ourselves feel better, but not change the outcome of anybody's life in a serious way because we don't teach them to help themselves.
We'd rather blame their plight on political opponents.
Be right back.
Don't go away.
Here's Mike in Kool, California.
Welcome, sir, to the EIB Network.
Thank you, Rush.
Mike, my question is, this NFL thing, these players sign million-dollar contracts.
Now, not all of them get multiple millions every year.
Right.
But they do really well.
And they want a piece of the pie, too.
It's like, I don't know, I'm a former firefighter.
I wish I could have a contract, gives me a paycheck, and oh, you got some extra money over there.
I want that too.
What is it?
Well, now, interestingly, you have swerved in, whether you know it or not, what the real stumbling block is in these negotiations.
Very briefly, the collective bargaining agreement between the players and the owners was updated in 1986, and the owners hated it.
They made a mistake signing it.
It's a long story as to why.
Paul Tagleybu was the commissioner.
The owners universally hated it because it gives the players about 60% of the gross.
This is after they signed the contracts.
Yeah.
Well, no, the way it works is that the NFL is a $9 billion industry.
The first billion is taken by the owners for stadium maintenance, the various interest infrastructure aspects of the game, practice facilities and this kind of thing.
So after you take away that billion, the actual revenue split's about 50-50.
Okay.
But it's 50-50 of everything that the league brings in.
But the owners don't like the 60-40 arrangement.
The owners want that $1 billion off top to be $2 billion.
They're not get that.
Maybe $1.3 is where it'll end up or $1.4.
But the owner's proposal that was rejected took away any percentage of the total, no matter what it might be.
The owners offered instead definitive dollar amounts every year.
Like every year, the salary cap will be $141 million per team next year, $151 million next year, and escalate throughout the year of the contract, regardless what the league generated.
The players are saying, no, no, no, no.
We want a percentage of anything above what is projected to be earned.
And the owners are trying to take away the percentage as the owners trying to get, in other words, they're offering the players an increase, moderate, but it's hard and fast dollars based on nothing.
I mean, if the owners lose money, they still have to pay it.
But if they earn twice as much as they expect, the players would get nothing more than what was guaranteed.
The players don't want to give up the percentage arrangement that they have now.
This is a no, well, they don't, no, they will not go percentage on the downside.
They don't want to talk about the downside.
They only want to talk about percentage of the upside.
This is the thing.
So this is really the stumbling block now: the owners want to change the whole structure here of the way it has been.
And in addition, they want to, it'll end up being that the percentages the players get will end up being less than what they're getting now.
But the owners are trying to tell them it's going to be more money, even though it's a smaller percentage.
And they're not buying that.
So now the players are saying, Well, let us see your books.
Let us find out how much you could pay us.
And the owners were willing to do that.
Third party come in and audit whatever the owners gave, and the players not and they walked away when that proposal was made.
Okay.
Now, they because I don't think they really that that's a that's a bargaining point.
But at the end of the day, the owners, the players know that an ability to be paid something doesn't mean you're going to get paid what you, I mean, the owner's going to pay what they want to pay when this is all over.
Just be if if I have the ability to pay Snerdly $2 million doesn't mean I'm going to pay him $2 million.
The players are saying Snerdly's now begging for it.
You can't hear it.
But the players are saying, We want to see how much you can afford to pay us.
And the owners say that's irrelevant.
What we're talking about is what we're willing to pay you, and this is it.
And if you don't like it, then you can go work for the UFL or you can go work for a college or what, like anybody else in life.
So that really seems fair.
And I've told a bunch of owners too.
I said, you guys do not think that it's good for the fans to hate the players in this.
The players are who you sell.
At the end of the day, you're going to want the fans to love those players.
That's who they pay to see.
So don't speak out against them.
Hey, my immediate tweak, Snurdly, my immediate tweak is already taking hold.
The media tweaking.
Now, Mark Ambinder, National Journal, has just tweeted.
Rush Limbaugh just asked basically whether the military has contingency plans for a president who may not be sufficiently pro-American.
Look, let me just state right here: this is typical.
I throw it out there.
I knew that's what's called stirring the excrement.
The contingency plan for such a president is called an election.
The media, the military said, it would be a coup if the military were to have such a plan.
But it worked.
It's already out there in the Twitter universe.
Yes.
It's like I play the Strativarius each and every day behind the golden EIB microphone.
There is a great piece in the Wall Street Journal today by Ron Johnson.
Ron Johnson is the guy who is the Tea Party Republican from Wisconsin.
He's a close friend of Governor Scott Walker.
He's associated with Bemis Industries.
My daughter probably would not have survived in a system where bureaucrats stifle innovation and ration care.
Ron Johnson, The Wall Street Journal, today, the first anniversary of the greatest single assault on our freedom in my lifetime, the signing of Obamacare.
As we consider what this law may do to our country, I can't help but reflect on a medical miracle made possible by the American healthcare system.
It's one that holds special meaning for me.
Some years ago, a little girl was born with a serious heart defect.
Her aorta and pulmonary artery were reversed.
Without immediate intervention, she would not have survived.
The infant was rushed to another hospital where a surgeon performed a procedure at 1 a.m. that saved her life eight months later.
When her heart was the size of a small plum, an incredibly dedicated and skilled team of medical professionals surgically reconstructed it.
27 years later, the young woman is now a nurse in a neonatal intensive care unit where she is studying to become a nurse practitioner.
She wasn't saved by a bureaucrat, and no government mandate forced her parents to purchase the coverage that saved her.
Instead, her care was provided under a run-of-the-mill plan available to every employee of an Oshkosh, Wisconsin plastics plant.
If you haven't guessed, this story touches my heart because the girl is my daughter, Carrie.
And my wife and I are incredibly thankful that we had the freedom to seek out the most advanced surgical technique.
The procedure that saved her and has given her a chance at a full life was available because America has a free market system that has advanced medicine at a phenomenal pace.
I don't even want to think what might have happened if she had been born at a time and place where government defined the limits of most insurance policies and set precedents on what would be covered.
Would the life-saving procedures that saved her have been deemed cost-effective by policymakers deciding where to spend increasingly scarce tax dollars?
Ron Johnson, writing today at the Wall Street Journal.
Here's John in Crofton, Maryland.
Great to have you, sir, on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hello, Rush.
Hey.
Diamond Dennis to you.
I haven't seen you.
I guess I saw you in Washington, D.C. around a little over four years ago at the Warner Theater.
Oh, yes, I remember that.
I'm called as I'm originally from New Jersey.
And by the way, I can't hear a thing you're saying, so now I have empathy for your hearing loss.
Why can't you hear anything I'm saying?
It's our phone.
I'm absurdly, and I just heard Croft in Maryland, so I guess I'm talking on the air.
But I went to public schools for all 12 years in inner-city Newark back in the 40s and 50s, graduated in 58, got accepted at Dartmouth, graduated from there.
And I don't think I could do this today.
I don't think I'd even live through 12 years of school in Nork right now.
It's really a darn shame what happened there.
And these teachers that I think are overpaid, Penny was on the phone with the governor, and she was complaining that she would have to pay $600 to cover herself and her husband on some kind of Cadillac health care program.
My question to Penny is: how much union dues do you pay?
And also, since it costs about $50,000 or $60,000 a year to go to Ivy League school today, why can't the academics take a pay cut so that people don't have to go, you know, take out all these student loans?
But you never hear about that.
That is one of the fascinating things about tuition and college.
The one area keeps going up, but they never, you never hear the university system gouged or ripped like Big Oil is, or Walmart, or big anything else.
We just have to give student loan program more money.
We just have to loan more money.
It's about 40 grand to go to an Ivy League school nowadays.
And it's, and I just, he's right about that.
He really is.
You may not have been listening and heard what he was referring to.
Grab audio sambai number 25 out there, Ed.
This is what he's talking about.
It was Chris Christie on the radio in New Jersey last night called the governor radio show Penny in Blackwood called.
She was upset.
She said, I want to know why you want to take at least 13% out of state employees' pay for health care.
I mean, that's going to cost my husband and me $600 a month of our money to pay for our health care.
That's going to cut into our food and other bills.
How do you expect us to live?
Now, here's a woman, state employee, state's paying it all.
State's broke.
Christie says, you're going to have to pay a little bit more for your health care.
How am I going to live?
How am I going to live?
It's going to cut into our food and other bills.
And this is what Governor Christie said to her.
How I expect you to live, Penny, is you're going to have to pick a different health plan that's not nearly as rich as the one you're getting now.
That's how.
Are you going to force us to not have any health care?
No, I'm not going to force you not to have any health care.
I don't think that means forcing you to go without health care.
But what it means is we can no longer afford to pay 90 plus percent of the cost of your health care.
Public workers are getting their health insurance paid for out of your property taxes.
And state workers are getting their health insurance paid for out of your income taxes.
If I'm $67 billion in debt and you don't want me to take any more money out of your paycheck, how am I supposed to pay for it?
Am I supposed to just raise taxes?
Because if I raise taxes, you're going to pay more taxes.
And if your property taxes go up, you're going to pay more taxes.
I mean, the money's got to come from somewhere.
We can't print it.
I don't believe it.
I'm watching.
It's another Hillary Clinton press conference.
Secretary Clinton talks about nuclear situation in Japan.
Secretary Clinton talks about bombing in Jerusalem.
Secretary Clinton talking about Libyan operation.
Secretary Clinton talking about school lunch program.
Secretary, where is Obama?
He's on his way home.
Oh, that's right.
He's on his way home.
He didn't go to the Mayan ruins.
Well, anyway, there's Governor Christie telling her, money's got to come from somewhere.
We can't print it.
What he's basically saying is the time has come.
You're going to have to pay for some of this yourself.
Taxes are already too high.
Your neighbors don't have the, can't afford it anymore.
But you can see she thinks that this is an entitlement.
She works for the state.
Her health care should be paid.
The idea she's going to have to pay for this is just foreign.
She's going to starve now.
She's going to starve.
You know, I have to tell you, you've heard me say this before.
I'm a broken record on it, and I probably ought to shut up about it.
But I am appalled.
I'm really wondering where I screwed up in life because I think I'm one of the few people who actually pays for everything I have, want, or need.
I missed the memo.
I missed the instruction on how to get other people to pay for you.
And by the way, this runs at every income level.
I mean, I have been just as incredulous when I see a big-time corporate CEO retire and get a $700 million package and use of the corporate plane whenever he wants.
You know, he's not there anymore.
And the company's buying his apartment and his tickets, the Sportsman Incident.
I look at it and I say, well, what's the $700 million for?
Other people say, look, that was the deal.
He got the deal.
What are you griping about the deal?
No, I understand what I'm understanding that I wouldn't ask for that.
Give me the money if I want an apartment, I'll pay for it.
Social dark.
Anyway, it all blew up because the ex-wife found out about it and blew the whistle on the deal, and he had to give some of it back.
Nobody knew about it, except the board.
So the ex-wife blew the whistle, or the disgruntled wife before.
But anyway, that's just one example.
I'm just telling you that this happens at every income level.
I just missed the memo on it.
I'm under this obviously mistaken belief that if you want a health care plan, you pay for it.
I don't know where.
I would love maybe to get a lobotomy and have a brain transplant to where I didn't think that anymore.
Figure out how to game the system.
Yeah, but see, it was funny.
I was watching TV here, PMS NBC, Mrs. Clinton up there.
And every five seconds, 10 seconds, they'd switch the graphic.
Hillary Clinton discussing nuclear situation in Japan.
Hillary Clinton discussing Libyan situation on ground.
Mrs. Clinton discussing saltwater desalinization plans in Saudi Arabia.
Mrs. Clinton discussing Libyan situation.
Mrs. Clinton discussing Morocco finance.
And she was stressing that the international community prevented a humanitarian catastrophe.
So now we know what the policy is.
And she was going, she spoke longer than Gaddafi does.
She did.
Looked to me like she was running.
She's talking about how wonderful Morocco's government is, which is probably the kiss of death.
Because she talked about how stable his regime was.
And look where he is.
So whoever's running Morocco, you have been warned.
Bruce in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
You're next on the Rush Limbaugh Program.
Hi.
Well, good afternoon.
Thanks for taking my call, Russia.
Yes, sir.
You bet.
You were talking about maybe 2 million people or so in the cities around the Northeast that were the poor.
New Jersey.
More poor people in New Jersey than in Boston, a couple or three other cities combined.
And my question is: when are we going to finally redefine what poor, what the poverty level is in America?
Do you know how we even come up with that?
I don't know how we come up with it.
I really don't know how we come up.
I'm having a mental block now, even though I just read it.
What department does it, Commerce?
The reason I ask is because I just don't see poor everywhere in America.
I don't see anyone starving to death in the streets.
Oh, there's a lot of food insecurity out there.
You can see it standing in line at McDonald's.
Are they going to have McNuggets or not?
That's especially, you know, food insecurity at Port St. Lucie has resulted in 9-11 phone calls.
But I think that's just exactly what we need to do in America: redefine what truly poor is and who the ones that really need the help are, because I think we're all willing to help out.
I did this once.
Let me tell you, I did this once.
There's a guy at Heritage speaking of heritage, and his name is Robert Rector, R-E-C-T-O-R.
And he has done exactly what you suggest.
He has compared what we call poverty to what is poverty in other countries.
And you'd be amazed.
You'd be amazed at the number of people we say live in poverty have air-conditioned homes and cars, for example.
He's got all these numbers, all these stats.
I happened to make it public back in the early 90s, and I got creamed for it as somebody lying and just making stuff up.
So that's one of those areas the left doesn't want you to go there, but I went there.
Robert Rector at Heritage has every answer you want on your question.
Okay, folks, we have no more time.
The fastest three hours in media, and we're done.
But there's always tomorrow, which I can't believe it's Thursday already, but it is.
And we'll see you then, and we'll look forward to it.
Thanks very much for being with us today.
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