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July 7, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:53
July 7, 2011, Thursday, Hour #2
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By the way, a little programming note, programming on a housekeeping note, there have been a couple of um complaints, I guess, about the high definition Ditto Cam today at Rushlimbo.com asking me if it's working.
Yes, it's working.
It's working for everybody that we've tested nationwide.
We got a complaint, we look into it.
So if you're having a problem with it, check your Wi-Fi network or trash your computer, do something, but don't blame us.
Because our high definition ditto cam is working.
Greetings and welcome.
Oh, no, no, it's one of those days.
800-282-2882 if you want to be on the was Dawn's turn yesterday, mine today.
800-282-2882 is the number if you want to be on the pro.
By the way, you never told me, was it?
Track pads in that box.
Okay, good.
All right, so that's what I thought.
Well, thanks for telling me.
It only came in a half hour ago.
800, we took a took a commercial break to find out, and I forgot I was even going to be told.
800-282-2882, if you want to be on the program, the email address Lrushbo at EIB net.com.
Now more thing on all Obama's finished.
He said that the meeting's finished.
Obama said the leaders came here in a spirit of compromise.
Big whoop.
There doesn't need to be.
I know.
The independents want to hear compromise.
Okay, good.
They came in, they came in the attitude of compromise.
That's a beautiful thing.
I love it.
Now, one thing I think Obama's counting on here.
Banking on, in fact, is uh his hope that people don't know the difference, critical difference between debt and deficits.
The debt that's being talked about here is basically the treasury bonds issued by the government, backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.
That's the kind of debt we're talking about.
The stuff the ChICOMs buy and the Japanese buy.
We're not talking national debt here.
In these debt ceiling meetings and so forth.
Well, it one have one way we are, but Obama's not talking about that in when he starts talking about the difference between debt and deficits.
He's talking about the debt as issued.
Now, the debt is the bonds issued by Uncle Sam, backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. Deficit spending is all the insane spending the government does that outstrips the money that it takes in from taxes, fees for government services, sale of these bonds and government land, all of that.
No one is saying we should default on our debt.
What I'm saying is we won't.
We can't.
I mean, we literally can't.
It's not that we, oh my God, we can't let that hit.
It's not that we can't.
We couldn't if we wanted to.
Well, we could if we wanted to if we just stopped accepting payments, which is what we would have to do.
We cannot default.
And there's no reason to default.
It's a scare tactic.
With the number of bonds that the Treasury has issued, it costs the government about 20 billion dollars every month to service this debt.
But the government actually takes in about 200 billion dollars every month.
Minimum.
So we easily have enough to cover the debt service of these bonds.
In fact, we could easily cover debt service even if the debt limit was slashed instead of raised.
We don't need to raise the debt limit to cover the debt service.
And he's banking on you not knowing that.
And I guess it might be working because Snerdley looks confused here.
What am I not making clear?
You sure you got it?
You're not just saying that to impress me.
We do.
We've got enough money to cover the debt.
All we $20 billion a month to cover the debt service on the bonds we sell.
Period.
That's all we need.
The rest is just for spending.
The problem is that Obama's spending $300, $500,000, $600 billion a month more than the $200 billion coming in.
That's the problem.
The problem is not that we don't have enough revenue coming in to service the debt of the bonds, the sale of the bonds.
And Obama is counting on nobody understanding this.
Again, the government actually takes in about 200 billion dollars every month.
We easily have enough money to cover the debt service.
And we could cover that $20 billion a month if we cut, if we reduced the debt limit.
The two really aren't even related, is my point.
Obama's trying to conflate them here.
The problem Obama has is that he spends and wants to spend over $300 billion a month, which is a spending problem, my friends.
It's not a debt servicing problem.
We don't have a debt servicing problem.
We don't have a default problem.
Ain't possible.
Isn't going to happen.
We can't.
Now the sad thing here is that Obama knows this.
So he is intentionally confusing the public that every dollar government spends is the same as every other dollar.
Meaning he wants you to think that there's no difference between paying bondholders who lent the government money on the solemn promise of repayment backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. In other words, the bond buyers, people go out and buy the T, but long bond is short bond, whatever bond they buy.
Obama is trying to confuse the public that every dollar that a government spends is the same as every other dollar.
There's no difference between he wants you to think there's no difference between paying the bondholders, servicing the debt, and paying, say, investments in these absurd green jobs initiatives that he wants to slide to his pals over GE.
Well, he's telling the public that if we don't pay the latter, if we don't continue to make these investments, that we will be defaulting on our debt every bit as much as if we stuff our bondholders or stiff our bondholders, which is a misrepresentation at its charitable best.
In fact, Geitner, little Timmy, says that he can't, which means he won't distinguish between the first kind of payment and the second, because once the government commits to some kind of spending, he claims there's no difference.
That's insane.
To avoid default, all we have to do is reaffirm that we will continue making interest and maturity payments on bonds as they come due.
That's all we have to do.
It has nothing to do with a social security check.
It has nothing to do with Medicare services, and nothing to do with any of these stupid education investments.
Zilch Zero Nada.
To avoid default, all we have to do is to keep making interest and maturity payments on the bonds as they come due.
The rest ought to be Obama's political problem, not ours.
We're the ones that want to live within our means.
He's the one who wants to spend $300 plus billion dollars a month, and we only got $180 billion coming in after we make the $20 billion payment on service of the debt.
That's not a default issue.
That's a scare tactic.
There is no default.
It's a common sense problem any adult understands if you explain.
You can't keep spending money you don't have.
We don't have the money.
It's no more complicated, which is why I'm sorry I sit here and I get so frustrated.
As I said at the top of the show, these guys are coming, he's the president, so he sets the agenda or sets the premise.
And because of, you've got to be polite, respectful of the president, what have you, you accept the premise, you do the deal, you do the discussion, you do the debate, within those parameters, and it's all bogus.
Lookie, I have here, I'm holding on my formerly nicotine stand fingers, a story from Reuters.
Let's The uh journalists are Ross Colvin and Jackie Frank.
A small team of treasury officials is discussing options to stave off default if Congress fails to raise the country's borrowing limit by the August 2 deadline, sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.
Senior officials, including little Tim Gitner, have repeatedly said that there are no contingency plans if lawmakers don't give the government the authority to borrow any more money.
See that is not even what we're talking about.
But behind the scenes, here's the next paragraph.
Behind the scenes, top treasury officials have been exploring ways to prevent a financial meltdown that would be triggered if the government were unable to pay its bills on time.
But we are in no risk of being unable to pay our bills.
Treasury has studied the following issues.
Whether the administration can delay payments to try to manage cash flows after August 2nd, which it can.
Government does it all the time, such as in the case of so-called government shutdowns.
They do it all the time.
If the U.S. Constitution allows Obama to ignore Congress and the government to continue to issue debt.
Now that, folks, that's the 14th.
Obama claims that there's a clause in the 14th Amendment gives him the right to spend money.
Oh yeah, he does.
And that's and and Geithner, of course he does.
He's an authoritarian.
He's a statist.
Of course the Constitution's gonna say whatever he wants to say in that regard.
But it doesn't.
Anyway, so that's the truth of this.
That's what this is really all about.
There's no possible default.
We have we purely have a spending m uh problem.
We do not have the money to continue the spending Obama wants.
We just and the Democrats included, he's not alone here.
We do not have the money.
Raising the debt limit will not give us the money.
We don't have the money.
and we haven't had the money for a long time.
Rush Linboy, your guiding light, your boo work.
And we go to the phones.
Who's up for Green Bay, Wisconsin?
Uh Steve, thank you for calling, sir.
Glad you waited.
Great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Thank you, Rush.
How are you doing today?
Very good.
Thank you.
You were saying we can't default, and a thought popped into my head.
Um if you and I were running the business, of course we wouldn't.
Well, we wouldn't be in the position in the first place.
But given who's sitting in the big chair, is there any possibility in his desire to destroy the economy and rebuild it with big government planning that he would let us default, blame the Republicans, and then he comes sweeping in with another messianic complex?
Yeah, I mean, they could they can just stop making payments on things.
Uh he can just stop making the payment, instruct Geithner, uh stop making the payment on the basis that uh Republicans haven't authorized uh uh any new revenue increases and so forth.
He could do that.
Um but the the the real world consequences of not making your payments.
I mean, that that's gonna affect a lot of potential voters, too, not some debt holders money.
You know, we we've never not paid off the the the uh the T bond holders.
We've never not paid him off.
Uh we've moved it down the road, we've kicked it the case.
Well, we've never done that before.
Uh that he'd destroy the stock market.
He would create a panic like you haven't seen if he did something like that.
Yeah, I can I can see that.
I'm I'm wondering if that would stop him.
Uh with the ego and And and like you say, with uh being the one if he sees this as an opportunity, if he can lay all the blame at the feet of the Republican.
Well, that would be the key.
That he'd have to be able, have to be able to uh make sure that would be the vast majority conclusion if it happened.
But he couldn't get away with it.
I'm I'm answering this in the in the sense that, yeah, anything's uh anything's possible.
But refusing to make payments under the 14th Amendment is unconstitutional.
I mean it that there would be total hell to pay for that.
Too many people are watching this now.
It's impeachable.
That's an impeachable offense.
Just to arbitrarily say we're not uh that that's banana republic kind of stuff.
We are in many people's eyes.
Headed and entered.
I mean, the president's brother still lives in a hut after all.
Jay in uh Kitchikan, Alaska.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello, sir.
Hi, Rush.
I uh give Snurley a raise, would you?
He's the hardest working screener in America.
Um you know what I know that just by observing him every day.
I I can see what an arduous uh uh challenging uh mood destroying job it is.
I see it.
I can't avoid it.
I look across the glass, I see it.
So I'll I'll I'll pass along to him the fact that you know he's the hardest working screener in America.
Thank you.
Uh we need to change the discussion to reducing the size of government.
My dad used to think he could starve them out, but uh the bureaucrats, but if they had the printing press, I'm not sure that's possible.
You know, I'm old school.
I remember I thought the tipping point was when the Grace Commission humbly suggested that automatic elevators in Washington shouldn't have operators with them.
Uh and then Congress took the Grace Commission report that was about twelve trillion dollars ago or so and just put it on a shelf and laughed at it.
Um But I I think that uh they need to start talking in terms of reduction in the size of government.
I'm not sure if the Department of Education falls under the interstate commerce clause or the uh general welfare part of the Constitution, you know, but I don't think it's either.
Thanks.
Um well what is your real what is your real point here?
That the uh you they talk about spending, spending, cutting taxes, spending.
The problem is we need to reduce the size of government.
We need to deconstruct federal government.
Oh, you're saying that spending cuts alone do not equal reducing the size of government.
Right.
Well they'll print more money.
No, you know this it it it it doesn't it doesn't mean no I've got to find out the the p the jet industry is livid over something Obama just said, and I'm I'm trying to find that out while I'm talking to you here.
Uh and I can't it's something about the tax break for for jet owners, and I'm the the I'm I'm intrigued what he said.
I'm trying to find that out right now.
Um but but y yeah, you'd have to cut whole departments, but you can you know, cutting spending independent of reducing the size of government is still you've got to do it.
Well y yeah, that's fine, but if you know, if you eliminate large areas of government that are unnecessary or wasteful, you know, I remember all the stories about how the IRS lost track of 40 billion dollars back in the nineties or whatever and the post office losing money.
Now all you hear about is the military wasting money, and I'm sure those other departments are.
Don't even have to talk about that.
Look all you gotta do is cite the Department of Energy.
The Department of Energy was was formed to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
The Department of Energy now spends who knows how many billions of dollars our dependence has increased.
We need to get rid of the Department of Energy.
Department of Education the same way.
In your mind and a lot of other people's, by the way, that would constitute reducing the size of government.
And it would.
Now the political reality of that um is in this context right now, unlikely.
We do have spending from and I tell you, uh even if if you're if you're trying to tell me that spending cuts, why even pursue them because they don't reduce the size of government, I disagree totally.
We do not have the money we're spending.
We are we're we're borrowing, we're taking away opportunity for prosperity for two future generations.
We are destroying the job creation sector.
We are destroying the opportunity for economic growth, which will raise revenue.
We all because we're spending money and borrowing money and printing money that we don't have.
And that has to stop.
Whether or not there is a an actual reduction in the size of government is not really relevant.
Don't try to be too smart by half here.
And I know the conventional wisdom is we're never gonna cut the department energy rush, be realistic.
We're never gonna cut the department.
I I fine.
Okay, we're never gonna cut it.
We can reduce spending.
And we can reduce the size of government in that regard, and we must.
I mean, there's no there's no option.
By the way, folks, a lot of people ask me, what is it like, Rush to be right so often?
What does it feel like?
And I have to be honest, folks, it's uh I still get a big kick out of it.
I mean, I still get it, I I still get jazzed out of being right, particularly when I'm right light years ahead of everybody else.
And another I called it.
This is about Arizona, but it's gonna start happening in a lot of other states too.
I will tell you about it when we resume.
All right, there's no new jet news out there.
Um Fox was ballyhooing this such a way that I thought Obama had said something about the jet tax in the meeting with the Republicans that uh the jet industry was livid about, but there's no new news.
They just had some jet lobbyists on to talk about how the the uh private jet, the corporate jet market was just starting to revive when Obama a couple weeks ago started talking about ending their tax breaks.
That was it was nothing new on that.
So if you're a corporate jet guy, there's no news, no new news on it.
Um it was just typical Fox sensationalism, and I bought it, you know, I fell for it.
Um just asked me, Mark Halpern's still suspended for his comments about Dick Obama.
And I think he is.
I I haven't seen him back on the air anywhere.
I still say, you know, that there's a lot worse stuff you can say than that.
That in fact, let me get that just a second.
I've got this Arizona stuff.
This folks, remember when I told you that if they keep raising taxes on tobacco, they're gonna eventually run out of money because they're using tobacco taxes to fund health care programs for kids.
They said, Well, wait a second now.
We need to be giving smokers medals.
We need medal of honor, medal of service.
We need to really hold these people, put them on a pedestal.
Smokers are paying for the S chip program, the uh the state children's health program.
Arizona has a major public health problem.
Too few people are smoking.
That's not the only fiscal problem the state faces, but it's one of them.
Like many states, Arizona's public finances are in miserable shape.
Much of the state's budget trouble can be attributed to a decade-old decision to finance an expansion of low-income health insurance coverage with revenue dependent on tobacco industry profits.
A little more than a decade ago, the state grew its low-income health insurance roles, claiming that the new enrollees would be paid for by revenue From a deal with the tobacco industry.
Well, now with smoking rates and tobacco industry revenues falling, a budget crisis brewing, and a growing number of individuals eligible for Medicaid, Arizona has chosen to reduce its health care coverage for low income adults.
They don't have the money.
All the smoking taxes and the uh the grab of profits from the tobacco industry are not producing enough money.
So, and they've they realize they've got the point, they can't raise taxes anymore, or they'd be even worse shape.
So they're telling these low-income people, hey, buddy, you know what?
We were really caring about you.
We really cared for you.
Well, we're gonna make sure you had health insurance.
You know how we're gonna do it?
We're gonna tax those evil cigarette smokers and cigar smokers and those evil tobacco companies.
At the same time, we're gonna make it impossible for them to smoke anywhere.
We're gonna ban smoking everywhere.
But we're gonna make sure you got health insurance from the tax revenue.
So, and by the way, we're gonna make sure those people quit because it's a health issue.
We don't think they ought to be smoking.
They put pressure on the health care industry and get cancer and so forth.
So all it's it's all come to pass.
Fewer people smoking, fewer people buying tobacco products, fewer tobacco company profits, less revenue, and so people low income, the poor in Arizona being saying, Cyanara.
You're on your own.
Told you, folks, it's gonna happen in New York.
It's gonna happen.
It's it's it's gonna happen wherever that they are primarily using tobacco tax revenue to fund anything.
Most of it is, at the States, is tied to health care for either kids or for poor people, because that's how they gut rent your heart.
That's that's how they got everybody to um go along with it.
Now, Atlanta.
Subject of our morning update today.
Atlanta is being rocked by an education scandal that's so widespread that it almost defies imagination.
In a report to the governor there, Nathan Deal, and other authorities, special investigators have named 178 quote unquote educators involved in cheating.
Those educators rigged the standardized tests to falsify educational gains among students.
In other words, they falsified the standardized, they rigged the tests so to make it look like the students were getting better grades than they were.
Now, while this is going on.
From the Wall Street Journal, the NAALC in a press release issued just this morning condemned 24-hour cable news channel CNN for its recently announced primetime news lineup, calling the lack of diversity in its collection of news anchors a glaring omission.
The NAA LCP, deeply concerned with the lack of African American journalists in primetime news, both on cable and national news shows, said the NAA LCP president and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous in a state.
How would you like Mark Halpern to be talking about you and your name is Benjamin Todd Jealous?
I mean, you can put the words together for yourselves here, folks.
You don't need me to do this.
Mark Halpern talking about you.
And your name is uh Benjamin Todd Jealous.
Anyway, he said we've come to expect this from the likes of Fox News, but not other networks.
While we understand that news is now a 24-hour cycle, most Americans get their news from the morning and evening primetime broadcasts.
A new CNN news lineup announced yesterday featured John King, a white guy, Anderson Cooper, white guy, Aaron Burnett, white babe, and Piers Morgan, British white guy.
CNN did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
So uh not my the NAA LCP has yet to utter one word Of protest or anger or whatever over the massive cheating in Atlanta public schools.
And we're talking for the most part, black students, not all, but a lot of black students, a lot of black uh principals, teachers, administrators here.
Lot of uh lot of cheating going on against uh the education of black children in Atlanta and the MAACP today's after CNN.
Now, here are the details out of Atlanta.
Thirty-eight of the 178 accused cheaters are screwel principals.
So far, eighty of the cheaters have confessed, they said they did it.
Investigators said that 44 of the 56 screwels that they looked at were involved, and this organized cheating has been going on for 10 years.
According to the Atlanta Urinal and Constipation, a local newspaper, investigators believe former Screwels Superintendent Beverly Hall, who just quit, either knew or should have known what was going on.
Incidentally, she was honored as the National Superintendent of the Year last year, and she's involved here in the cheating scandal.
Liberals always elevate their failures.
Well, I it was it was it was it was it was all yeah, I think it was to avoid uh uh No Child's behind left alone.
But in addition to that, well, you know, I guarantee you run up to any liberal today, and who knows about the scandal.
They don't know about them, tell them about it.
Right up to any liberal.
And you know what their reaction is going to be?
Well, what do you expect when you have all these testing requirements on the teachers?
What do you expect?
That's what they'll say.
Your average liberal when confronted with these liberal teachers and principals and so forth, cheating and cheating the students.
Well, what do you expect?
Those damn testing requirements.
You say, well, okay, I guess next time a bank's robbed, I'll blame the banker.
How will that fly?
Now the governor, Nathan Deal, and school board members are vowing there will be consequences for the cheaters.
The school board chairman, Brenda Mohammed, says the cheating is scandalous, devastating because you just don't cheat.
Children.
Well, Ms. Mohammed, I, L. Rushbo have news for you.
American children have been cheated for decades now.
Not just in hot Atlanta.
The phony test scores in Atlanta, the real test scores from almost every blue city in America, prove how American children are being cheated.
And it's just a tip of the iceberg.
Every single institution the liberals control, including education, is in deep decline and plunging fast.
And we all think cleaning houses necessary.
The Atlanta school system is just the is just the starting point.
I mean, it is a debacle.
Folks, what has happened there?
With all this admitted cheating going on.
And I'll bet.
What Snartley, you think nobody will be fired.
You think heads are going to roll here?
You do.
You think people are going to be charged with something?
You do.
You don't think they're going to try to sweep this under the rug?
I guess they can't now because too much is known.
All right.
This is I have the Atlanta urinal constipation story here.
Investigation into cheating finds unethical behavior across every level.
Investigators describe highly organized, coordinated efforts, uh coordinated efforts to falsify tests when children couldn't score High enough to meet the district's self-imposed goals, not Bush's.
The cheating cut off struggling students from the extra help they would have received if they'd failed.
At Venetian Hills, a group of teachers and administrators who dubbed themselves the chosen ones convened to change answers in the afternoons or during makeup testing days, according to the investigators.
Principal Clarieta Davis, a testing coordinator, told investigators she wore gloves while erasing to avoid leaving fingerprints on answer sheets.
At Kennedy Middle School, children who couldn't read not only passed the state reading test, they scored at the highest level possible.
At Perkerson Elementary, a student sat under a desk, then randomly filled in answers, and still passed.
At East Lake Elementary, the principal and testing coordinator instructed teachers to arrange students' seats so that the lower performing children would receive easier versions of the fifth grade writing tests.
Principal Gwendolyn Benton, who has since left, obstructed the investigation, too, the report said, when she threatened teachers by saying she would she would sue them out the ass if they slandered her to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Gwendolyn Benton, say hi to Mark Alperin.
Across the Atlanta public schools, staff worked feverishly in secret to transform testing failures into success.
Teachers, principals erased and corrected mistakes on students' answer sheets, area superintendents silenced whistleblowers and rewarded subordinates who met academic goals by any means possible.
Superintendent Beverly Hills and her top aides ignored, buried, destroyed or altered complaints about misconduct, claimed ignorance of wrongdoing and accused naysayers of failing to believe in poor children's ability to learn.
And as I said it's been going on for as long as ten years, this was how the Atlanta Scrual District produced gains, improvements on state curriculum tests.
The scores soared so dramatically they brought national acclaim to the Superintendent Beverly Hall in the district and she got an award.
In the report, the Governor's special investigators describe an enterprise where unethical and potentially illegal behavior pierced every level of the bureaucracy, allowing district staffed.
It's liberals, folks.
This is what you get when liberals run institutions.
Okay, so why, folks, why are the liberals and the reverends, the justice brothers?
Where are they?
In regard to the Atlanta Scroll scandal, where are they?
This primarily affects African American kids.
They've been cheated.
They're not marching in the streets of Atlanta over this misplaced for the trust.
And these teachers are not unionized.
Imagine that.
Who's next on the phones?
Ed in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Nice to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
I want to go back to the debt negotiations, and I think the Republicans ought to go in and say, okay, we want all these reductions and everything else, and you want taxes on the rich, so our bargaining chip is we want a national estate tax.
And that is would work like this.
It's kind of like a real estate tax.
You total up all the things you own or control, and if it exceeds 20 million bucks, including your foundations you control and so forth, then you gotta pay five percent of tax on that.
And I'd call it the Pelosi Buffett tax.
Well, it would ensnare a lot of other people too.
Well, and it would also kind of uh help all those with affluenza, and um, it'd be a way to really get at the uh the democratic base because that is what so much of it is.
Yeah.
That is.
It is.
So basically, a tax on the nonprofits and a state tax of the nonprofits of uh, what do you say?
Five percent?
Yeah, whatever it is.
And I mean, there's there's a million people in this country with net worth over five million bucks.
So you say, okay, maybe there's five hundred thousand with net worth of twenty million.
Uh that would bring you uh uh a chunk of change, and then the Democrats could say, okay, we're taxing the rich, the millionaires and the billionaires.
Yeah, see, this you've just you've just nailed why there isn't a wealth tax.
Why they only talk about raising income tax on the rich, starting at $250,000.
Income taxes are designed to prevent the creation of wealth or the accumulation of wealth.
But your average Warren Buffett does not face a tax on his accumulated wealth.
Nobody does.
That's why the left is all for raising taxes on the rich.
Kennedys, they didn't care they're coupon clippers.
So I'd say it'd be an idea.
I mean, it's uh uh be funny to see Obama's face if it were actually proposed.
By the way, the Reverends in this Atlanta thing, they would like I mentioned before, they'll blame no child left behind.
Or no child's behind left alone, you know, whatever they call it.
But that's that's what they will do.
All right, folks, fastest three hours in media, two of them down, and in the can, another exciting with lots of stuff left to go coming right up.
Hey, folks, uh, this is from the independent UK.
Men with wide faces, men with wide faces feel more powerful, and as such will behave unethically.
That's right.
Men with wide faces more likely to lie and cheat than narrow-faced men, but they seem to make better businessmen.
According to the UK Independent.
I know I have a wide face.
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