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Oct. 27, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:09
October 27, 2011, Thursday, Hour #2
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Yeah, I think that's true.
I think there are other reasons why college tuitions are so expensive.
A, you have all those scholarships out there.
However, a football scholarship probably pays for itself how many times over.
You have the college, you have the scholarships, and then you have the mandatory student aid.
That's out there.
I don't know.
I'm I'm still amazed, folks, with all the money still the universities are out there soliciting donations and contributions.
I just I marvel at the amount of money circulating throughout every area of our society, and no matter what area we're talking about, they're all underfunded.
I don't care if it's education, if it's medicine, it's pensions.
Everything's underfunded.
In other words, we're spending more than anybody is taking in.
And it contributes this whole notion that nothing is real.
It's all been built on dreams, loans, debt, what have you.
I mean, exorbitantly so.
Anyway, going to switch gears.
Great to have you back.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network, the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Don't forget to look at a lot of these institutions of higher learning have these endowments.
Harvard, Columbia, sometimes earning 20, 22% on their endowment investments.
And they don't pay any taxes on their Wall Street profits.
I'm telling you, folks, it's uh it's an ingenious racket.
Major government study challenging a once common type of screening for lung cancer.
The study of more than 150,000 older Americans shows that routine chest x-rays do not prevent lung cancer death.
Not even in smokers or former smokers.
The study found that those who had four annual chest x-ray screenings were just as likely to die of lung cancer as participants who did not have those tests.
The results from the National Cancer Institute funded research confirm previous smaller X-ray studies.
They follow another big study from that institute favoring a newer, more sophisticated imaging test.
So looky here.
Um with Obamacare, uh, we're not going to screen uh for breast cancer as often as we used to.
No, mammograms.
We're gonna do what we're we're we're we're waiting till later in life to start them, and we're doing them less frequently.
We are reducing uh prostate cancer screenings, and now they tell us that lung cancer or x-rays, uh chest x-rays, eh, it doesn't matter.
Chest x-ray screenings were just as likely to die of lung cancer as participants who didn't have the tests.
Now, I this is where I kind of get left cold.
I never once thought that a chest x-ray would prevent lung cancer.
All it will do is identify it, right?
Early detection.
But apparently, no.
They're not beneficial at all.
Do you believe this or is this no?
This is a third round here of the regime trying to cut costs by saying, ah, these tests, these screenings, they're not gonna save you.
Our death panels will handle this.
Pure and simple.
And get this.
There's a story like this, at least one story like this every day.
This is from State Controlled Associated Press.
Federal agents trying to patrol the U.S. Mexico border say that they're hampered by laws that keep them from driving cars and other vehicles on huge swathes of land because it falls under U.S. environmental protection, leaving it to wildlife and illegal immigrants and smugglers who can walk through the territory undisturbed, but the agents are not allowed to drive.
This is unreal.
So we got environmental protection laws that prevent the border from being patrolled in vehicles.
But if you're an illegal or a smuggler, you go ahead and walk all over this environmentally protected area, nobody can do anything to stop you.
But our agents can't drive there to get you.
Environmental protection laws.
Environmental groups said that lawmakers lining up to support legislation to change this have routinely opposed the Endangered Species Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and dozens of other laws, they accused lawmakers of using illegal immigration as the latest excuse to gut these protections.
Some days you read this stuff, you throw up your hands, you say it's hopeless.
It's just absolutely hopeless.
You know, yesterday Obama's out there complaining.
No longer could we build a Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay Bridge, the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, like we use it.
That's right.
And you know why?
Environmentalism.
Environmentalist wackos stand in the way of progress.
Every leftist activist group is essentially aligned to stop progress.
Paul Ryan yesterday went over to the Heritage Foundation to deliver a speech about conservatism, Obama, class warfare.
We have three sound bites.
It was a it was a terrific speech.
And I think Congressman Ryan is one of the leading intellectual lights in elected Republican circles for defining modern era conservatism.
The president has opted for divisive rhetoric and the broken politics of the past.
He's going from town to town, impugning the motives of Republicans, setting up straw men and scapegoats, and engaging in intellectually lazy arguments as he tries to build support for punitive tax hikes on job creators.
He continued.
Instead of appealing to the hope and optimism that were the hallmarks to his first campaign, he has launched his second campaign by preying on the emotions of fear, envy, and resentment.
This has the potential to be just as damaging as his misguided policies.
Sowing social unrest and class resentment makes America weaker, not stronger.
Right.
Pitting one group against another only distracts us from the true sources of inequity in this country.
Corporate welfare that enriches the powerful, and empty promises that betray the powerless.
There was a QA afterwards.
The moderator was the uh the president at Heritage, Ed Fulner.
He said, What do you make of Elizabeth Warren's comments that successful people are successful only because of the things government provides and that confiscatory taxation is justified because it's not really their success.
This is what I call the fatal conceit of progressivism.
It's upside down.
It's the presumption that money and wealth made and created in America is the governments, unless they benevolently expend it back to people.
No one is suggesting that we don't need good schools and roads and infrastructure as a basis for a free society and a free enterprise system.
But the notion that the nucleus of our society is the government and not the individual, the family, the entrepreneur, is to me just completely inherently backwards.
You know, he also made a great point that that uh uh the regime and the uh the American left Democrat Party have attempted to demonize private sector entrepreneurs and conservatives by accusing them of being pro-business.
And Ryan said that there's a big difference in being pro-business and pro-markets.
Pro-business and pro-free markets.
If the focus is on free markets and allowing them to uh uh do what they do.
That is the benefit.
That's where private sector growth takes place.
That is where the rising tide lifts all boats.
And support for free markets does not mean blanket blind support for business.
Every institution has its bad actors And bad guys, and the left, you know, I've been just talking about it in the first hour.
Look at their enemies list and look at who they demonize.
And it's everybody in business who happens to do well in a free market.
Because it challenges the authority and the size, the scope, the reach of government.
Now, just to refresh your memory, what the question was about Elizabeth Warren, she's running for the Senate in Massachusetts against Scott Brown.
Back in September, she was doing what she called her walking tour.
And this is what she had to say about you if class warfare and if you have made it, what that really means.
I hear all this, you know, well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.
No, there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own.
Nobody.
You built a factory out there, good for you.
But I want to be clear.
You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for.
You hired workers, the rest of us paid to educate.
You uh were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.
You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory and hire someone to protect against this because of the work the rest of us did.
So here is Elizabeth Warren trying to equate the non-contributory existence of the freeloaders to the successful.
That if it weren't for the freeloaders, the successful wouldn't have been successful.
That the successful didn't do it on their own.
The bridges and the roads to get to your factory that the rest of us paid for, as though the business owner had no role in paying for it, didn't pay any taxes or any of that.
Popular thinking on the left, and this is the question Fulder asked, uh, Ryan, what's your reaction to it?
And he said the fatal conceit of progressivism, it's upside down.
It's the presumption that money and wealth made and created in America is the government's unless they benevolently expend it back to people.
It's exactly right.
This has been a point that I have been making since the early 90s.
The left, the Democrat Party, all money is theirs.
All money is governments.
You end up with what you have based on they or their decision, their benevolence toward you.
If you're wealthy, it's only because government has permitted it.
It's only because government made it possible.
You had nothing to do with it.
Quick timeout.
Your phone calls are next after this.
Subeconomic news, the number of people seeking unemployment benefits, dipped slightly this week, though not by enough to suggest that hiring is picking up.
Weekly applications for unemployment benefits declined 2,000 to a seasonally adjusted 400, 2,000, still over 400,000.
Now, folks, I gotta for the last two weeks.
Gallup has uh subscribers.
You can be an email subscriber.
I don't think it costs anything.
It's just like checking off a box on their website and they'll send you updates, newsletters, whatever it is.
For the last two weeks, I have seen unemployment data, little blurbs, three or four lines from Gallup.
And the one that came in uh just today predicts based on their own unemployment figures, Gallups, their own surveys.
They are expecting the government to report an unemployment figure of under 9% this week.
Then there is a story out there that the U.S. economy has expanded at a 2.5% rate.
This is a Wall Street Journal news alert.
U.S. gross domestic product grew at at inflation and just an annual rate of two and a half percent from July through September, the strongest performance in a year.
Where?
Where is this two and a half percent government growth?
Nobody sees it.
And if the unemployment rate, if Gallup's right, and this story from AP does not tend to indicate that that's going to be true.
I mean, if if If we're still at 402,000 applications for unemployment.
And you know this is going to be revised upward next week.
They're always wrong on the low side.
So if this week's new claims number is revised up by the amount it usually is, it'll turn out to have gone up.
Now for the record, the previous week's number was revised up, of course, always is not reported.
It was only up, they revised it by 1,000 last week, which is lower than the usual three to four thousand that they revise it by.
But we're still over 400,000, 402,000.
Yet Gallup gallops, and folks, I'm waiting for this.
I I remember now the re-elect magic number on unemployment's eight percent.
No president has ever been re-elected in the modern era with the unemployment rate higher than eight percent.
And if the unemployment number gets below nine, if it like if it's eight point nine percent, forget the point nine.
All the media is gonna see is that eight.
And they're gonna go to town with it.
And they're gonna say it's finally working.
The first stimulus.
And so the campaign, the re-election campaign premise of I need more time will be set up, will be established.
We thought this would happen sooner than it's happening.
We need more time.
Remember, my original forecast and prediction on what the Obama re-election campaign would basically be worse than we thought.
Normally our fixes, our stimulus would have kicked in immediately, but it was so much worse than we knew.
It's taking that much longer.
And now that it's just starting to work, now that we're just seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, is this the time to change horses?
We don't want to change horses in the middle of stream.
That'll be combined with uh uh massive attacks on whoever the Republican nominee is.
So if they can get that unemployment number at any time between now and next summer to eight point whatever, the reality on the ground isn't gonna matter a hill of beans to the media.
The optics to be able to say unemployment under 9%.
There's the magic number eight.
Forget the point nine forget.
If it's.8, forget that.
It's 8.
After being 9.2, 9.4, 9.1, it's finally working.
Obamonomics finally working.
It took longer than we thought.
We need more time.
So when I saw that, coupled with this expansion rate, the growth rate at 2.5%, where is the growth?
If there is such growth, it is on the public sector side.
It's on the government side.
There is no private sector growth.
I mean, look.
Look at uh Gibson guitar.
When Gibson guitar has its door kicked down and its wood removed, who do they think?
When the borders are not secured, illegal aliens pour over, the drug lords are sold automatic weapons at the direction of the government, who do we who do we thank again?
When our public screwels fail to educate a large percentage of the children who attend them, who who who do we thank?
When government policy destroys the housing market, who who do we thank for this?
When our health care costs skyrocket as a result of Obamacare, who do we thank for this?
To whom do we show our gratitude?
To whom do we express our appreciation?
As for the cops, would these be the same cops that are being um attacked by the left for trying to keep peace and order down there at Occupy Wall Street and in Oakland or wherever it is.
These Occupy crowds now starting to make mayhem.
Who do we thank here for this?
To whom do we bestow the credit for all of this?
Obama and his regime.
That's who.
Quick phone call, Matthew in Fort Worth, Texas.
You're up first today.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Thanks for taking my call, Rush.
You bet, sir.
Consider myself a rush baby, been looking to you about 20 years now.
Wow.
I love it.
Thank you, sir.
Got uh got a couple of quick things on your first hour.
Um you're talking about the uh education, the student loans and all that.
Um I think you're absolutely right.
Uh there's this false image that's portrayed that if we don't go to college, um, that we're gonna be failures.
Yeah.
You know.
We can't we can't just go out there and do uh like our fathers and our grandfathers did and just um you know be true entrepreneurs and um you know follow our dreams.
Like something you talk about a lot.
You don't have a prayer.
You don't have a chance.
And uh and I think the other thing that's associated with that is there's this big social status that is attached to going to college.
Um you know, uh, and it it kind of starts a class warfare like we're kind of talking about here with the um uh the what's going out going on with the um Wall Street uh deal.
So um another point I wanted to make was that there's uh the left is using this this dream and this um mecca, as I would call it, of going to college.
They they try to get all these people in there and then they indoctrinate a lot of them with these uh that's one of the primary purposes, one of the main objectives in the left controlling education.
No question about it.
Yeah, waiting on that lightning fast laser printer.
Just got this some ABC News, the um GDB surge, GDPs are two and a half percent, according to state controlled ABC not credited to Obama policy yet.
John Bowler, the director of country risk service with the Economist Intelligence Unit said that purchasing managers indices, for those who've been real into that's the plural of index.
Uh it just doesn't sound good to say indexes, although you probably do, is indices.
Anyway, for the manufacturing and services sectors had suggested an improvement in September's activity, private consumption and industrial production have been rising.
He said that on balance the data suggests some improvement in economic conditions, which can largely be traced to a fall in oil prices in recent months, the resolution of supply chain bottlenecks stemming from the natural disasters in Japan, and an end to the uncertainty created by the debt ceiling debate in Congress in early August.
Employers created a total of 103,000 jobs in September, which Boulder called a mildly encouraging sign.
But he said at least 150,000 jobs will need to be created each month if the unemployment rate is to start falling.
Boulder said he sees little reduction in the jobless rate over the next eighteen months.
Gallup for two weeks in a row now has sent out a little blurb here based on their own unemployment number survey, where they clearly predict well they don't predict, but they say that it wouldn't be surprising if the government reports an unemployment number of under 9%, even this week.
Even tomorrow.
We shall see.
Who's next?
Tim in Dana Point, California.
Great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Good morning, Rush.
99.9% dittos from Vietnam vet.
Anyway, my issue this morning is kind of on behalf of the uh the voters, Republicans, Democrats, and across the board is that uh I wonder what the uh the love quotient perhaps would be between the the college students and the parents if they were to uh say Obama's got this great idea.
Uh all you have to do is uh co-sign your house on behalf of me for my education, you know that you You owe it to me, I'm your kid, and I will I will pay you back.
And that way we would put the onus on the people themselves.
So let's see then what would happen about the voters uh in looking at Obama's prospects if he has to reword this bill which will not pass through the Congress and uh see what what happens then.
Uh I lost you.
Are you are you suggesting that parents be forced to co-sign their kids' student loans and that if that happened there would be far few stort student loans taken out.
I believe so.
And Okay, so if there are fewer student loans taken out because parents would not want to extend themselves co-signed something two hundred and ten thousand dollars, for example, uh then what?
Fewer people would end up going to college.
That's true, but somebody else would have to pay other than the people that uh don't have any effect or don't have any kids, or they pay their taxes all year round.
But that's what's happening now.
I realize.
So if they were forced to co-sign, I would bet that they do in fact have a lot less people going to school, and then let's see what else Obama has up his sleeve next to try to circumvent that issue.
Well, that's an interesting thought.
Make the parent of course, you know, now you're introducing something that is very, very foreign, a very foreign concept in uh in in in in 2011, and that is that parents are responsible for their kids.
I I uh that that that would be something a lot of parents said, what?
I'm I'm responsible for my kids' education?
Hell with that.
Uh but if the parents co sign what am I missing here?
What what if it uh instead of the instead of all the other taxpayers.
The parents co-sign a car loan, parents co-sign it as why not the student loan.
Well, they true, they get to stay on the health care.
Well, but they have to pay for that.
That was something they didn't expect to be part of the deal.
They thought they were going to be allowed to stay on their parents'health care policy at no charge.
To age 26, they didn't realize that it was going to cost them.
But remember now, parents are only responsible for their kids until they're 26 under health care.
So co-signing for student loans.
Yeah.
I can I can uh it probably would be a lot fewer people going to college.
Uh Mark and in in Mobile, Alabama, hi, great to have you on the program.
Hello.
Megadiddos from the buckle of the Bible belt, Rush.
I want to talk about this student loan program.
I am a rush baby.
I started listening at the age of fifteen when I took my first government class in high school.
And this student loan program is seductive.
I'm a I was lucky enough to go to a conservative college, but I graduated with fifty thousand dollars in student loans.
When this program came out, I did the math and said, Man, I'm gonna save about a hundred and fifty to two hundred dollars a month.
And I started thinking, wow, this is great after all this time and giving handoffs to everyone.
Finally, something comes to me, and then it hit me.
Wait a second, I'm gonna pay for this either way.
I'm either gonna pay for it now or I'm gonna pay for it in taxes.
This is um putting money in my right hand pocket to take it out of my left.
And the goal, I believe, and and you certainly can can uh tell me more on this, but I think they're just trying to get the middle class to be dependent on them as well.
They've already got the s the lower socioeconomic status.
Now they're trying to get the middle class.
Oh, there's no question that that's what this is about.
And they're uh it's been going on for a while.
The middle class is.
The middle class is on the hooks.
Long long before the student loan program came along.
Well, that may be.
I wasn't on the hook, though.
And now I'm now they're trying to get me on the hook as well.
And that scares me.
I'm afraid it's gonna buy him a lot of books in 2012.
How are they how are they how are they trying to get you on the hook?
By saying that we're gonna lower the amount of your monthly payments, we're going to forgive your loan after twenty years of payments.
Well, now I'm suddenly dependent on the government to erase my student loan.
Well, that's true, but and it's it's it's difficult to illustrate here, but the the the dirty little secret here is that this is gonna end up affecting so few people.
It's a big sales pitch.
Oh, it and it and it it it's n the people that it does help is gonna help them, but the four save or four eight four to eight dollars a month.
Don't quite know how.
It's so outrageous.
I don't quite know how to express what a ruse the whole thing is, other than to tell you it is a campaign optic.
It is it's no different than than than putting forth a tax bill that you call a jobs bill.
It's the Affordable Care Act.
It's anything but affordable.
Obamacare, there's nothing affordable about it.
There's nothing far reaching about it.
None of the legislation coming out of this regime does anything it is named to do.
Again, this jobs bill, it's not a jobs bill.
It is a tax bill.
you And the student loan bill, one of the first things Obama did was move in to corner the market and to take it over from the banks for the express purpose of having people owing the government.
When you owe the government, when they have the power to forgive your loan, when they have the power to limit what you pay on the loan, when they have the power to seduce you.
Imagine you're faced with a repayment of a student loan that you think is $210,000, and Obama comes along and says, you know what?
After 20 years, we're going to forgive it.
And we're only going to make you pay 10% of what you earn if you take a job in social services.
What are they doing?
They're controlling what you do, they're controlling how you choose to live your life, and you're choosing to live your life in such a way as to limit the damage government can do to you.
That's what this is really all about.
And all of it's happening under the guise of compassion.
All of it's happening under the guise that Republicans hate you.
Republicans want you dead.
Republicans want dirty water, they want dirty air, they want poison everywhere.
Republicans don't care about you, but look at what we're doing.
In the process, all that's happening here is that people buy into this, go into debt with student loans, and then they are at the mercy of the regime.
If you end up registering Democrat, that will be known.
If you vote Democrat, you will be looked upon with better favor than somebody who votes Republican.
If if if uh if if Obama via executive order or any other Democrat leader wants to forgive your loan based on good behavior from you, and they do it, they own you.
And that's what this is all about.
I don't think there's any question about it.
In terms of saving people money, again, the numbers of people this is actually going to affect.
We'll just wait.
It's gonna take a while, but you will see that I am right about this.
It isn't gonna be long, couple of three years.
Remember this day, remember this week, with Obama promising all these wonderful reforms in the student loan program, and how it's gonna reduce your costs and the burden of paying these loans back, it's gonna be greatly reduced.
And in three years, two years are gonna go by and nothing's changed, and you're gonna be wondering where's the relief.
You're still making payments on the student loan.
There hadn't been any change whatsoever.
It's no different than Obama's mortgage uh rescue plan or his foreclosure rescue plan.
None of it is working.
None of it has had any impact.
None of it has done anything toward its primary objective or its claimed desired effect.
But that's not the point.
The point is Obama gets to say it.
He gets to promote it.
Obama gets to tell you that he's making it possible for you to stay in your home.
He's making it possible for you to get an education, he's making it affordable for you to do this.
None of it ever happens.
None of it, all that, in fact, the opposite happens.
Life gets tougher, things get more expensive, you lose more flexibility and freedom.
That's of no concern because all that they're after now is your vote and your support.
So that's all this stuff is, is just campaign optics.
Don't forget.
I forget it was last week, two weeks, three weeks ago, the news hit that the regime asked for the authority to track you down on your cell phone if you were in arrears On your student loan and to harass you for repayment.
Most people are using cell phones.
There's not a cell phone phone book out there like there was and is for landline phones.
The regime has asked for permission or authority to get hold of people's cell phone numbers for the purpose of calling them and harassing them on repayment of student loans.
So while you're made to think here that you're getting a free ride or a relaxation of your responsibilities.
It ain't gonna be the case.
At all.
Quick timeout, folks.
Sit tight.
We'll be back and continue with much more after this.
To Syracuse, New York, this is Sean.
Glad you called, sir.
Great to have you on the Rush Limbaugh program.
You are up next.
I do in Rush.
Yeah, it's very good, sir.
Thank you.
Yeah, let me get right to the point here.
Um I'm a conservative, and I survived four years of uh liberal indoctrination at a college uh institution.
And um basically, well, I was a I was a criminal justice major.
Um, and I could have finished my criminal justice degree in two years.
And I was forced to take ridiculous classes like uh human growth and development, religious persons and traditions, Buddhism, things that I you know wouldn't need to learn for a criminal justice degree.
And it's I mean, the whole it's it's how they keep you there for four years.
Now you are a person, you're you're a guy after my own heart.
Because this is this was this was one of my main complaints.
I told my dad when he's telling me what all was going to happen to me if I didn't go to college.
I said, look, if if I if if I can go there and learn what I want to learn that I that that is relevant to what I want to do, I'll be there every day.
You wouldn't be able to keep me out, but if I gotta take ballroom dancing, if I've got to take human growth 101 to learn about boiling water before I drink, I don't care about that.
Son.
These people are professional educators.
It's their job to understand how to best educate the largest number of people to call a well-rounded education.
I said, I don't want one.
I want a targeted education.
Yeah, I know this this is the point.
Let me make something very clear here.
I understand well-rounded person and all of that.
My only point is, some people aren't cut out for it.
Education has to be structured, like I said.
You got 200 people in a classroom, you can't tailor it to every individual in that classroom.
There has to be a curriculum, it has to be based on what the educators think is the best way to create a quote unquote educated person.
I understand all that.
It just wasn't for me.
It's it is expensive, and and but it just wasn't for me.
I am not, I don't want anybody to misunderstand here.
I am not telling you to punt college.
I'm not telling you that's the route that you should take.
But I I do I do understand that it is an institution controlled by the left, and I don't trust them.
I I it is an institution that is controlled and dominated by the left, and I know what their purpose is, particularly higher education, but you don't even have to go to higher education to hear the horror stories.
It's much different than when I was in Scrual.
There wasn't any indoctrination.
There wasn't certainly any any ideological indoctrination.
Now, I would have to admit, all the teachers I had growing up were pro-America.
Now, today that would be controversial.
That big pink face pro-America is uh pro-imperialistic, pro-racist, pro whatever, to a lot of sickos today.
But I I when I went to high school and junior high, American history was taught from the standpoint of American greatness.
Uh the founding of the country was taught within the context of how miraculous it was.
Not as it's taught today, a crime.
No, I have to take women's studies courses.
And you know something else?
You think I'm in Trouble now, wait till you hear this.
When I went to school, they had home egg for women.
You didn't need Michelle Obama with a garden in the White House telling people what's healthy or not.
The schools taught it.
Because the dirty little secret is cooking isn't fun.
It is a chore.
And it was something that was taught how to be done properly for the right nutrition and all that.
There was home egg back then.
But it's all it's all changed now.
I wouldn't want any part of it.
I wouldn't want to have to go to a go to a class called American History and listen to a teacher tell me how my country sucks and then give me the answers to the tests so that she could get away with propagandizing me while making it look like she's teaching me something when she's not.
That's what's going on in American school, and it's not for me.
And it wouldn't be for my kids.
I would my kids wouldn't survive if I had any.
They would have been tossed out along with me.
After one year of the garbage that is suffices for an education these days in way too many schools in this country.
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