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Aug. 4, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:15
August 4, 2011, Thursday, Hour #3
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Well, the White House spokesman Jake Carney, a clever wordsmith that he is, uh just once again said that there's no silver bullet to fix the economy.
And thanks to them, nobody can afford silver anyway.
There's no silver bullet, there's no lying through their faces.
There are things they could do immediately that they will not do.
U.S. News and World Report, it was Paul Bedard that had the story, or Paul Bedded, I don't know how he pronounces his name.
Obama administration added nine and a half billion dollars in red tape in July.
Nine and a half billion dollars in new regulations just in July.
Now the caller of it called last hour and suggested that there are plenty of bullets Obama has.
You know, you close down the EPA, you you get rid of OSHA, any number of things to get people out of people's lives, get the government out of people's lives.
Obama's not going to do that.
Obama's a statist.
He's not going to take power away from himself.
It's just the exact opposite.
Those kind of things.
That's why there's no compromise with this, folks.
That's why all there is for us is to beat it.
All there is.
Our loan opportunity is to defeat all of this.
You want to hear something funny.
You want to read something really funny.
First, we had Jah Huffington huffing and puffing about Obama and his meaningless focus on jobs.
I have an AP story here, and honest to God, this is the headline.
Democrats warn long-term joblessness could derail recovery.
I kid you not.
The number of long-term unemployed workers, those out of a job for six months or more, remains at near record levels.
An ominous sign that could derail any economic recovery.
That's the conclusion of a report from congressional Democrats that recommends new job search and training programs to help the long-term unemployed get back to work.
Job search and training programs.
For the life of me, folks, I have been listening to this my whole life.
I have been hearing about job training programs, retraining programs, re-education programs, remuneration programs, re-this, re-this, and I ask myself, what is the point of school?
Why do we even have schools?
If when people leave them, they need to go to some place called a job training center.
What the hell?
And what kind of a joke are they playing on us here?
Democrats warn long-term jobless could derail recovery.
What recovery?
Long-term joblessness is their creation.
It's the result of what they believe.
It is the result of their policies.
You want to hear something else funny?
This is hilarious.
You know, Democrat National Conventions in Charlotte, they're gonna move the bus station away from where the convention's gonna be held.
This is just like in New York.
Back in 1992, the Democrat convention in ninety New York was in 92 in Madison Square Garden at the old EIB building.
And the mayor at the time was General David Dinkins, mayor for life.
And they just they came along and they just moved the homeless.
They put them in police vans and they took them down to the battery park.
And they left them there, and they figured by the time they found their way back, the convention would be over.
Honest to God.
The Charlotte Area Transit System said it's gotten a strong indication the main bus station uptown will have to be moved because of the 2012 Democrat National Convention officials have started planning where they can create a temporary transit center.
The Charlotte Area Transit System Chief Executive Carolyn Flowers, speaking at a luncheon yesterday, said the transit system hasn't heard officially from a local host committee about the size of the security perimeter around the time Warner Cable Arena where President Obama's expected to be renominated, but because the transit center is across Trade Street from the arena, the Charlotte area transit system probably will have to pack up.
So the Democrats do not want the Democrats do not want the cameras to pick up the kind of people who go in and out of the bus station during their convention.
That's their voters.
It's their voters.
Half their voters live at the bus station.
So now they're just going to move the bus in Charlotte, North Carolina, so that C-SPAN cameras and other cameras will not show those kinds of people at the Democrat National Convention.
That AP article on uh Democrats' warning of long-term joblessness could re-ail recovery.
That's just a push for more stimulus.
I have never met, I don't know, snurdly if you I have never met anyone in my life who has ever been trained or retrained by a government grant.
I have we got uh supposedly we have all of these these uh government uh uh training programs, uh new job search and training program.
I have never met anybody who is a graduate of one of these places.
Have you?
In all the people I have interviewed for jobs over the years.
I have never met anybody that showed up from a government job training program.
I haven't even I haven't even seen the job training.
It's exactly right.
I haven't even seen a job training center.
I don't know where they are.
Now the Democrats keep talking about we have to build them and we have to staff them, and we got to send people there to learn how to do jobs because whatever they learned in school didn't prepare them for that.
And then before they get to the job training center, they have to go to the place to learn how to search for the training center.
I mean, it's what it says here.
Report from Congressional Democrats that recommends new job search programs and training programs.
So they want to teach people how to search for the training center so that if they can go to the training center and then learn to be trained how to work and then go get a job.
I have never seen any of this.
I've never seen one.
I have never met anybody that ever went to one of these places.
Okay.
Now bear with me here.
I should have done this during the break, but I got you would not believe the things I have to deal with during this program that have nothing to do with this program.
Mainly, will you pay for this and will you pay for that?
And would you mind if I put that on your account and could I put this on your account and so forth?
So there's a couple of great sound bites here I gotta find.
It's about here it is.
Uh it's about this FAA thing.
I want you to grab soundbite seven and eight.
But first, let me find the story.
Aha, I have it right here.
This is the story about the FAA, which is temporarily shut down.
On the surface, the partial shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration is about whether to cut 16 million dollars in air service subsidies, a pretty small amount in Washington.
Sixteen million bucks.
Underneath, however, are layers upon layers of political gamesmanship that at its heart is about whether Democrats or Republicans get to call the shots in Congress.
Throughout this story, this AP story, the uh the the writer that says Joan Lowy here is uh ignoring the fact that it's the Democrats who are holding this issue hostage by demanding card check.
If you read deep enough into this story, you know, I did.
You find this.
Here's what it's really all about.
But the most politically difficult issue involves a labor provision in the House long-term bill.
Republicans want to overturn a national mediation board rule approved last year that allows airline and railroad employees to form a union by a simple majority of those voting under the old rule.
Workers who didn't vote were treated as no votes.
They want to change it so that doesn't if it somebody who doesn't vote just doesn't count.
A simple majority of those voting.
So basically what the FAA shutdown is about is card check.
The Democrats want the ability for workers to unionize at a private ballot.
So that said it nobody knows how anybody uh anybody votes.
It allows these professional thugs to do away with I mean with public ballot.
It allows the professional thugs to do away with a secret ballot in order to intimidate employees in joining a union.
They want a public vote to put pressure on people to vote for the union.
Because if you vote no publicly, you're making yourself a target.
You and your kneecaps.
So that's what this FAA thing is all about.
It's all about trying to unionize more railroad and airline employees.
It's not about the subsidized airline routes.
Okay.
So the audio sound bites.
Yesterday in Washington, this is a montage.
Dingy Harry, Stenny Hoyer, Barbara Boxer, Chuck Schumer, and the Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood talking about the Republican Party and the FAA.
Stop this foolishness.
We are not going to be held hostage as you did with the debt ceiling crisis.
Republicans continue to practice the politics of confrontation and hostage taking.
This is government by hostage taking.
They have set in motion a second crisis, and once again are holding the livelihoods of Americans hostage.
On 20 other occasions, Congress did not hold hostage 75,000 people.
Shameless.
They are the ones holding these people hostage.
They're stupid.
Pork Project and Card Check.
Thank you.
What this is really about is card check.
Aboutizing all these uh workers in a public vote guaranteeing passage.
So at this press conference, Jonathan Carl at ABC asked Jay Rockefeller questions.
Senator Rockefeller, we heard directly from Senator Reed yesterday that quote, sometimes you have to step back and find out what's best for the country and not be bound by some of your own personal issues.
Senator Reed told us he was willing to accept the House bill.
You have blocked it.
Are you willing to partially shut down the FAA?
Harry Reid jumped in and refused to let Rockefeller answer the question.
I'm answering that question because you're quoting me.
You know, I'm the majority lead over here.
The way that we have America going today, there is no penalty for outrageous conduct.
What they have done is outrageous.
And what you've done is say what he said, she said.
That's not the way it is.
Everyone knows us, as Senator Rockefeller said, the issue behind all this is the labor issue.
They were concerned about Central Air Service, they wouldn't have stuck in as hostages.
It's nice to focus on Central Air Service, but focus on the outrageousness of what they're doing.
That's what you should be doing.
See, Rockefeller was willing to go along with the Republican side of this, and and Carl said, uh, well, Dingy Harry or Reed was willing to go along with a Republican bill yesterday, and Rockefeller wasn't in favor of that, and it was Senator Rockefeller.
Um we heard directly from Senator Reed yesterday, sometimes you have to step back.
So the question was to Rockefeller and Reed may I mean you should see this.
He makes a beeline for the microphone.
I'm answering that question because you're quoting me.
You know, I'm the majority leader over here, and Rockefeller is just standing there.
I mean, Jonathan Carl caught him.
Caught him, and Reed was forced to admit what this is all about.
Labor issue.
Here, listen to Reed again, and the question is to to Senator Rockefeller.
Are you really willing to partially shut down the FAA?
I'm answering that question because you're quoting me.
You know, I'm the majority lead over here.
The way that we have America going today, there's no penalty for outrageous conduct.
What they have done is outrageous.
And what you've done is say what he said, she said.
That's not the way it is.
Everyone knows us, as Senator Rockefeller said.
All right, that's enough.
I'm tired of hearing a camera clicks.
But I know.
Story has been around three weeks.
Okay.
Snerdley, the official program observer, says the story has been around for three weeks, the FAA being partially shut down.
Why now is it blowing up?
This is classic illustration of drive-by media.
The debt deals done.
All hell broke loose.
The guns were fired.
The bloodletting took place.
The mess was made.
Time to move down the highway and start the whole process all over again about something else.
And it was made to order timing-wise, because the hook of the story is the poor government is being deprived of 200 million dollars a day because the airlines are still collecting the fees, but because the FAA has shut down, the collection mechanism is shut down, and so the government is missing out on the 200 million dollars a day.
That's a billion dollars a week.
Our poor government, and that and that means that we're not funding Head Start and school lunch and all this stuff.
That's the hook.
That's why, I mean, I uh these these these so-called journalism these days, I mean, I it's it's made up of the most arrogant know-nothings throughout our culture.
Another sad, sad story.
Unemployment rates, unemployment rates rose in more than 90% of U.S. cities in June, mirroring a national slowdown in hiring.
Labor department said uh yesterday that unemployment rates rose in 345 large metro areas.
They dropped in 20 cities were unchanged in seven.
The biggest increase was Joplin, Missouri, which was hit by a major tornado on May 22nd.
City lost 9400 jobs in June.
The unemployment rate jumped nearly two percentage points to 9.6% there.
Twelve cities reported unemployment rates greater than 15%.
Eleven of those 15 were in California.
El Centro California had the nation's highest unemployment rate, 28 and a half percent.
Yuma, Arizona, 26.9%.
Both cities are big agricultural producers, depend heavily on migrant farm work.
Bismarck, North Dakota had the nation's lowest rate at 3.6%.
You know why?
You know what's going on up there?
There's an oil boom in North Dakota.
Fracking.
Schlacking, whatever it is.
Fracturing, fracking, whatever.
There's a big shale oil bloom uh boom going on in uh in North Dakota.
Lincoln, Nebraska, 4.1% unemployment.
Fargo, North Dakota, 4.2% unemployment.
Stephen in Holliston, Massachusetts, we return to the phones.
It's great to have you on the program, sir.
Hi.
Thank you, Rush.
Great to talk to you.
Thank you, sir.
Yeah, I the reason I I called, I just found it funny in the last 24 hours.
Well, I I got an email from a good friend of mine who happens to be a liberal.
Get you know, go figure here in Massachusetts.
But uh he was upset at me, uh tea partier, uh, because they're doing away with two billion dollars worth of student aids for graduate students.
So he it's my fault because I'm a tea party.
And I just w I uh where does that come from?
Wait, wait a second.
Who is doing away with two billion dollars worth of student aids for graduates?
He says this new budget that because of the Tea Party, we were forced to cut spending two billion dollars is being cut from student loan uh for graduate.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Are you the this most recent debt deal, or is this a uh a Massachusetts state budget?
No.
Uh well, if it's a state budget, you might want to clip about uh the the top fifteen uh wage earners in the state because they're all making a half a million or more and working for the UMass.
But uh it just he is claiming because of this federal budget, the cuts in spending from this budget cut, or from this new uh uh vote that two billion dollars is going to be cut from from graduate student uh subsidies.
And well, the the new uh the new budget does cut Pell grants, but Obama vastly increased Pell grants in the stimulus.
This is supposed to be temporary.
Again, there's no cut.
There's no cut.
It's a reduction in the rate of growth.
They're spending they're still gonna be spending more on this student aid.
You're you're it's just a typical liberal who doesn't understand students are being told this lies after lies after lies.
Okay, I just uh interesting story.
Um Dawn, who transcribes phone calls here in the event that I am unable to understand what the callers uh are saying, has a college-age daughter who called her in a panic.
Mam!
Ma'am!
What are the Republicans doing?
Cutting all the money for our education.
So, all across the fruited plain, students are being told that as part of this debt deal, Republicans have cut funding for education.
And so all and that's why the guy who we just spoke to on the phone, his liberal buddy, yeah.
The Republicans got two billion dollars from student aid.
Uh this is how they were where is the morality in this?
You see, I I don't think that that it can be said that one side in this debate we're having in this country is uh one side is no more moral than the other.
I mean it it is clear that our ideological opponents epitomize immorality.
I mean, these people why that barely scratches the surface in describing what they're capable of and what they do.
Mm-hmm.
Come here cutting education farming.
Where am I gonna stay in school?
So that's the kind of that's the kind of stuff that uh that we're up against.
Uh the government must do everything.
The government cuts money for education, no child can be educated.
It's an amazing thing, isn't it?
Okay, here's the health care stack.
In Indiana, the nation's third largest health insurance company is the latest to leave the individual policy market in another sign of diminishing competition to benefit consumers who buy policies through a state insurance exchange under the federal health care overhaul.
Aetna informed the Indiana Department of Insurance in an April 29th letter that it intends to cancel all individual policies on December 1st and get out of the market.
Exactly by design.
This is just the first of many health insurance companies who sell policies directly to individuals getting out of the business.
It's they can't compete.
Right.
They can't compete with the federal government or the state government.
They simply can't.
The Aetna spokesman said that the company currently has only 700 individual health insurance policies in Indiana, making up only a small fraction of the market.
They'll remain in other sectors, including small group coverage, but they're basically getting out of the uh out of the market.
Aetna to leave.
So individuals who want to buy health insurance now have one less place to go.
And pretty soon they will have no place to go in the private sector.
They'll have to go to the government.
Hospitals in Massachusetts will reap an annual windfall of 275 million dollars through a loophole enshrined in the new health care law.
Hospitals in most other states will get less money as a result.
This disclosure was buried in a regulation that Medicare issued late last week.
Hospital association executives in other states are up in arms over the news, which comes at a time when they are preparing for even more cuts under the newly signed federal debt deal.
If I could think of a better word than outrageous, I would come up with it, said Steve Brenton, president of the Wisconsin Hospital Association.
Even Medicare says that it is concerned about manipulation of its inpatient payment rules to create big rewards for one state at the expense of others.
Now, why do you think out of all the states in the co why do you think Massachusetts hospitals are getting a windfall?
Does the name Kennedy ring a bell?
So much for all this vaunted fairness and so much for all of the cost reduction in Obamacare.
David Catron has a story, The American Spectator today, the Obama watch.
In February of 2009, Obama went on the Today Show to discuss a variety of issues, including his plan to turn the economy around.
When asked about the consequences of failure for his presidency, he replied, Well, I will be held accountable.
If I don't have this done in three years, then there's going to be a one-term proposition.
Now remember, at Obama's birthday party last night, he said, hey, I didn't say change next week.
I didn't say change next year.
I didn't say it.
I said it's going to be longer than we thought.
We're not even halfway there, he said.
We're not even halfway there.
Which means he's not even halfway through destroying.
So whatever he's destroyed now is not even half what he plans.
Now, when Obama made this statement, the January 2009 unemployment rate had just been released a few days before, and it stood at 7.6%.
Again is February of 2009.
Now, two and a half years later, the rate stands at 9.2%.
Moreover, unemployment has only dipped below 9% in two of the past 26 months.
This is the longest run of such rates since the Great Depression.
In other words, Obama's three years are nearly up, and he most emphatically doesn't have this done.
By the way, we just got a call.
I'm going to interrupt myself here for a second.
Thank you.
This makes it even worse.
Congressman Louis Gomert from Texas informs us that the debt deal raises the amount of money spent on Pell Grants from $3 billion to almost $13 billion.
The amount of money spent on Pell Grants in this stupid debt deal goes from $3 billion to $13 billion.
And a Republicans are getting demonized for cutting when spending has actually increased by almost a factor of four.
Where's the morality in that?
So we're spending four times on Pell Grants what we were spending on them before the stupid debt deal was done.
And yet the Democrats are running around telling everybody that the Republicans are cutting education.
Even worse, back to the one-termer we've been waiting for.
Even worse, an important driver of the dismal employment situation has been Obama's signature achievement, the health care law.
The law's numerous new taxes and other disincentives for job creation, combined with the uncertainty over its ultimate fate in the courts, began dragging the economy back down almost immediately after Obama signed it in March of 2010.
During the first 16 months of Obama's presidency, the economy was creating jobs at a reasonably healthy rate.
Between the recession's low point in January of 2009 and April of 2010, net private sector job creation improved by 67,600 jobs a month.
But almost immediately following passage of Obamacare, monthly job creation flattened to less than 10% of that amount.
Is the assumption that the health care law prompted a slowdown in job growth a mere casual fallacy committed by right-wingers eager to damn reform?
Not likely.
While it is true that timing doesn't necessarily imply causation, there is other evidence.
Consider the case of Boston Scientific Corporation.
Like all medical device manufacturers, Boston Scientific found itself on the receiving end of a large tax increase when Obamacare passed.
What happens when the federal government adds to the cost of doing business for a particular industry by raising its taxes?
The companies comprising that industry find a friendlier and cheaper place to do business.
Boston Scientific has responded by reducing its workforce in Massachusetts and is investing 150 million dollars in hiring a thousand people in China.
This is just one example of many.
That is the result of the passage of Obamacare.
Which brings us to the most galling irony of all.
The Obama regime has now admitted that the health care law will not reduce costs.
Last month, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued a report showing that health care costs will rise faster with Obamacare in place than they would have in its absence.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services officials attributed the growth to an expansion of the insured population.
Under the plan, an estimated 23 million Americans are expected to obtain insurance in 2014, largely through state-based exchanges and expanded Medicaid eligibility.
In other words, the president's signature achievement actually exacerbates the main problem it was ostensibly designed to solve.
Obamacare will bend the cost curve upward while expanding the unemployment rolls.
It's happening.
And all of this was known.
I mean, you can't have a program that's going to add 32 million new people to the insurance rolls and reduce costs.
It just doesn't work.
The math was never going to add up.
Oh, and by the way, the Department of Health and Human Services issued new guidelines recently requiring health insurers to provide free birth control, including morning-after-abortion pills, in the name of women's health.
Abortion, federally funded abortion Is now the law of the land as a result of Obamacare.
There you have it.
Just the latest in healthcare news.
Quick timeout.
We'll be back and continue after this.
Here's Lee in Abigail, Louisiana.
Yep, Abigail, Louisiana.
Great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Hey, second time caller, Megadiddos.
Talking about the folks in Indiana, they didn't just lose choice for insurance.
Anyone who has a pre-existing condition that just lost their insurance cannot get insurance with a private company anymore unless they can get on a group plan.
So by default, they have to go to the state to get on a state last choice, uh last resort plan.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's a good point.
So these people have just been pushed out of their doctor's office, and now they have to go to essentially a state-approved doctor.
Yep, and that's what was intended.
That's exact.
This is what the entire purpose of Obamacare is.
To create that exact scenario.
I'm glad you called out there, Lee.
Uh, folks, Leon Panetta is on television.
The uh where he left CIA, he's over now at the defense department.
And get this.
Leon Panetta just called the triggers in the debt deal, a doomsday mechanism.
He says he is very concerned about the severe cuts in the Pentagon's budget that are implicit and implied.
Panetta, a Democrat.
Mr. Secretary, we already have a doomsday machine.
It's called the Democrat Party.
And what he's talking about is the trigger, if they don't agree to cuts in a debt deal, $500 billion cut in defense.
And he's the defense secretary, and he does.
They're raising hell about it on television right now.
And this is a deal we were all supposed to applaud and celebrate.
Dow Jones' industrial average is now down over 400 points.
Obama nomics dying live on TV, right in front of our eyes.
Media pulling out all the stops for more stimulus.
CNBC says recession seen looming as jobless benefits end.
We are watching Obama nomics die live on TV, right in front of our eyes, folks.
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