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April 11, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:38
April 11, 2012, Wednesday, Hour #2
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The views expressed by the host on this program documented to be almost always right 99.7% of the time latest opinion audit from the renowned opinion auditing firm the Sullivan Group in Sacramento, California.
I am Rush Limboy, your guiding light, America's real anchor man, and maybe the only one left.
America's truth detector and doctor of democracy.
All combined into one harmless, lovable little fuzzball.
Great to have you with us.
A telephone number.
If you want to be on the program 800-282-2882, the email address lrushbow at EIBNet.com.
Jackie Kalmas writing in the New York Times about Obama and the Buffett rule and all this stuff he's talking about.
By the way, folks, this stuff is never going to see the light of day this year.
It's not the point.
There won't be a Buffett rule tax passed.
None of this stuff is going to happen this year.
This is pure campaign leverage, structure, positioning, what have you.
It's fine to get mad about it.
I can't blame you.
Don't get depressed about this stuff, though.
I'll tell you when it's time to get depressed.
I'll tell you when it's time to move to New Zealand.
We're not there yet.
But Jackie Kalmas here really puts this in perspective the way she writes about it.
All but certain now that his Republican opponent will be Mitt Romney, President Obama has made his proposed Buffet rule, minimum tax for the wealthiest Americans like Romney, a centerpiece of his reelection campaign, defying the political risk of being seen as a tax and spender by wary voters.
Defying the political risk.
What's that mean?
Well, in the past, and Ms. Kalmas here even writes this, while voters have not often rewarded candidates who advocate tax increases, Mr. Obama and his advisors express confidence that voters are on their side.
Stupid voters.
And by the way, just to be clear, I'm not trying to be insulting.
It's the most proper description that I can come up with of the people who are the target of Obama's campaign.
Ignorant, uninformed, whatever, stupid, dumb.
I know it sounds coarse to some people, but that's to whom he's aiming all of this.
And the New York Times are a little bit worried here, defying the risk of being seen as a tax and spend liberal.
They remember how that worked out for Walter F. Mondo back in 1984.
At the Democrat Convention in San Francisco, Mondo promised to raise taxes.
He said Reagan's going to, too, but he won't tell you.
I just did.
And it was bye-bye Mondo in a 49-state landslide.
And the Democrats remember that.
There's Harold Meyerson.
Harold Meyerson writing in the Washington Post.
Harold Meyerson, huge leftist.
I mean radical Bill Ayers Without the Bombs.
Kind of leftist.
And you got a piece in the Washington Post, an economic recovery that leaves workers further behind.
This is a guy who supports Obama, supported Obama, wants Obama to be king.
Many of the reasons this recovery is different from all the others are widely known.
Rebounding from a financial crisis takes an excruciatingly long time.
The huge decline in housing values has reduced Americans' purchasing power.
Large corporations are making do with fewer employees, at least in this country.
But what really sets the current recovery apart from all its predecessors, by the way, there isn't one, but we'll play along here.
What really sets the current recovery apart from all of its predecessors is this: almost three years after economic growth resumed, this guy wants us to believe we've been in economic growth for three years.
Three years we've been in a recovery.
There was no recession, I guess.
And I'm sorry, I can't help interrupting myself, folks.
Let's go back to the beginning here.
What really sets the current recovery apart from all of its predecessors is this.
Almost three years after economic growth resumed, the real value of Americans' paychecks is stubbornly still shrinking.
So, after three years of the Obama recovery, people are getting poorer.
According to Friday's Bloomberg briefing, the pace of income gains is well below that of the past two jobless recoveries, and the real average hourly earnings continue to decline.
And the Bloomberg report cites one reason for this: most of the jobs being created are in low-wage sectors.
According to Bloomberg, only 70% of all job gains the past six months were concentrated in restaurants and hotels.
Oh, who would want to work there?
Oh, heaven forbid.
Well, what a rotten recovery.
This is a problem.
70% of the jobs are in restaurants and hotels.
Hence, it's a modern-day hamburger flipper thing.
Exactly right.
I mean, in fact, you would almost expect to hear that in the rest of this column.
But this is a huge leftist complaining.
Obama's jobs are nothing but hamburger flipper jobs, except now they're happening in hotels and restaurants.
Oh, health care and home care.
Healthcare and home health care.
That's where the jobs are.
Also, retail trade, temporary employment agency.
These four sectors employ just 29% of the country's workforce, but account for the vast majority of the jobs created.
And he goes on to lament on page two: only the rich are recovering.
Wonder why that is.
Traditionally, what the Democrats have told us is the rich are recovering because they're stealing from the poor.
The math on that, I've never understood, but they keep making the claim.
The rich getting rich by stealing from the poor.
And I guess that's happening now.
The rich are stealing from restaurant and hotel workers because the rich are recovering.
This recovery differs from its predecessors because it's concentrated among the affluent and almost entirely among the very rich.
You think there might be a reason for that?
And here's Obama, USA Today, tax the rich to help grow the economy.
Worked in Europe, didn't it?
You know, Europe really booming.
Greece, Spain, Germany, UK, really booming.
The way they tax the rich.
Obama said, let me ask you, what's the better way to make our economy stronger?
We give tax breaks to every millionaire and billionaire.
Should we make investments in education and research and health care in our veterans?
I am 61 years old.
We have been making investments in education my whole life.
What do we have to show for it?
Research, what?
They've turned NASA into a Muslim outreach.
Said, oh, speaking of NASA, there are some people inside NASA that are really fit to be tied because of the way two people, one of them, Jim Hansen, have bastardized NASA's credibility with this never-ending complaint of man-made global warming.
There's a lot of people at NASA and the Goddard Goddard Space Center, whatever.
They just literally, I've got the story here in the stack, and I'll get to it in due course.
Now, I got to, what did I do with it?
I just had it here.
Oh, here it is.
Supreme Court misunderstands healthcare.
A possible misunderstanding about Obama's healthcare overhaul could cloud Supreme Court deliberations on its fate.
Yeah, you realize the oral arguments are over, and now these Dumkopf judges are back there writing their opinions and passing them around, but they're all writing their opinions on a misunderstanding, leaving the impression that the law's insurance requirement is more onerous than it actually is.
The writer here for AP is Ricardo Alonso Zaldivar.
I wonder if he knows George Zimmerman.
I wonder if Ricardo Alonzo Zaldivar is a white Hispanic.
By the way, speaking, we've got a soundbite where somebody refers to Zimmerman as white, just plain white, not even white Hispanic.
I'll find it.
We've got all this.
In fact, I've got to have to pick up the pace here.
The point is that Mr. Alonzo Zaldivar, very, very concerned the court may not really know what they're talking about as they deliberate Obamacare because they think that it requires people to buy expensive insurance.
The mandate requires people to buy expensive insurance when it also offers a bronze insurance plan, which won't be quite as expensive since it only provides catastrophic coverage.
But catastrophic coverage plans are already available today.
You don't need a mandate for people to have them.
If you want one, you can go buy it.
And therein resides the primary number one problem we have with healthcare.
I just say, if you want a catastrophic plan, go buy it.
Do you know realize how many people think they can't?
Wow.
What do you mean, buy health care?
That's something I get at work.
The notion of providing your own health care is as foreign as any other concept.
So embedded is it in our culture that somebody else should pay for your health care that the very idea that you can go out and buy your own is met with what?
What do you mean, buy my own?
I've never bought my own health insurance.
Why should I start now?
If health care were priced according to market forces, like hotel rooms are, if health care were priced like everything else is according to people's ability to pay for it, yeah, there would be different levels of health care.
There would have to be, just like there are different levels of hotel rooms.
There are different degrees, levels of cars, houses, everything.
But somehow, healthcare, everybody's got to have the same, and it's got to be the best.
Because, what?
Wouldn't people die in the streets if it's left up to woo?
If people had to pay for their head, would they die in this?
Have you ever heard of the emergency room?
Would people die in this snurdly?
What has happened to you for crying out loud?
The official program observer is asking me, wouldn't people die in the streets if they had to buy their own health care?
Because why?
It's too expensive.
Well, it is.
It's too expensive because there aren't any market forces involved.
If market, now the question is, no, people at the bottom wouldn't buy, die.
We're a compassionate country.
What?
Do the 30 million who don't have health insurance die?
Do some of them die every day?
30 million people don't have health insurance, and yet they don't die.
How is that?
How is it?
They some of them steal other people's insurance cards.
Most people, most of them are not getting catastrophically sick.
For one thing, for crying out loud, if you believe the news, that everybody is one trip to the doctor away from a terminal disease diagnosis.
We're all going to die tomorrow unless we all have health care.
We're not that sick physically.
Now, Snerdley's goading me here, folks, because he's acknowledging we have a lot of new listeners here.
And Rush, they may not be understanding you when you're basically telling them to go buy their own health insurance when you know and they know they can't afford it.
Right now, they can't afford it, but there's a way to make that possible.
It can't happen overnight, but it's very simple.
For those of you new to the program, let me quickly explain the voucher plan.
The way it works is that we calculate how much money is being spent in the healthcare system per person, and we average it out.
And we would have separate categories for catastrophic.
You're in an accident, you've got an emergency to happen, and just normal everyday hangnail type stuff that you really shouldn't even go to the doctor for in the first place.
What people do.
We figure out what the per capita average annual expense is, and rather than just give it to Medicare, Medicaid, what we give it to you in the form of a voucher.
And let's say it's $5,000 a year.
And then what happens?
You are allowed to spend that $5,000 however you want on health care only.
And then whatever is left over at the end of the year, you get to keep to do whatever you want with.
And thereby we incentivize people to go shop for deals in healthcare.
If you need a mammogram, shop around for the cheapest place to get it.
And in the process, the people that do mammograms would start competing for your business and be price competitive.
And this is how it would ultimately be.
It's too simple to work because everything in this field must be complicated or people think it won't work.
But you simply introduce market forces to now wouldn't happen overnight.
Would take a requirement and a commitment to stick with it.
But you could do the same thing with education.
You're tired of public schools?
Fine.
Here's the money that is being spent on you.
Your taxes, actually, and everybody else's, on public education.
You want your kid to go to a private school.
Here's the money.
You find one that you can afford with this amount.
And if you can't, public school.
If you can, you go there.
Whatever's left over, you get to keep, but you have to spend on education.
Same thing with healthcare.
We've complicated this stuff so much.
But rush, but rush, abandon a hospital or rubber, but whatever is $600.
Now, it's not really $600, but it's way too high.
But at some point, it wouldn't be if it were all priced according to people's ability to pay for it.
The reason this stuff is out of control is because the consumer is not paying for it directly.
Nameless, faceless, invisible people are paying for it.
Insurance companies, government, what have you.
Anyway, let me take a break here.
We're going to do that, get some of your phone calls in.
And I still want to explain.
I was right on my way to doing it before I was interrupted by Snerdley on the court being confused about Obamacare.
Don't go away.
Be right back.
We were just talking about this the previous hour, and here comes the evidence.
David Rodham Gergen is a pundit and CNN.
We talk about conventional wisdom on this program a lot.
And I make mention frequently that whatever the conventional wisdom is, I am the opposite.
I turn and run away from it.
Conventional wisdom is groupthink.
Conventional wisdom is what all the so-called smart people know for sure is going to happen and what is happening.
And if there is one guy in Washington who epitomizes conventional wisdom, the essence of what would be a moderate, reasonable,
soft-spoken, non-confrontational, brilliant, intelligent, boring individual be David Rodham Gergen.
He is Mr. Conventional Wisdom.
Whenever he says what he thinks, it's what all of the prime movers and thinkers inside the Beltway think.
He was on with Suzanne Malveaux, Hansi.
You remember when you had a crush on her?
He still does.
Snurdley's still got a crush on Susan, even though you know she's a commie babe.
See, folks, what do you mean she doesn't look like a commie babe?
How do you what does a commie babe look like?
How about that Anna Chapman, the Russian spy that they had to send out of the country because she's getting too close to somebody in the Obama regime?
That's all I'm saying.
She's a hottie, Snerdley, and she's a commie.
Anyway, she said to Rodham Gergen, big question.
What does Mitt Romney need to do right now to get Santorum's endorsement and more importantly to get the social conservatives behind him?
These primaries, in effect, sucked Mitt Romney to the right and the positions he took, especially on social issues because he chased after the so-called Santorum social conservative vote.
He got himself mired into some of these women's issues like contraception and so forth, which I think have cost him among independents and cost him, especially among women.
So he's got to be careful now that he no longer is seen as being sucked to the right or panning to the right, but becoming his own person.
Who is Mitt Romney himself?
The primaries sucked Mitt Romney to the right.
Boy, it's a lot of people on the right to whom that's big news that Mitt Romney got sucked to the right.
And this mired in these women's issues like contraception has cost him.
He didn't get mired in women's issues on control.
This is a total fabrication these people have built.
It's an entire surreal narrative that they have created.
There is no reality in it.
Romney has no position once on contraception.
Zilch.
See, the Republican Party doesn't care about it.
This is how they lie to themselves.
This is how they set themselves up.
Mind over chatter.
Rush Limbaugh starting and ending a million conversations.
And as usual, with half my brain tied behind my back, just to make it fair, the Supreme Court doesn't understand Obamacare.
Ricardo Alonzo Zaldivar.
Wonder if he knows where George Zimmerman is.
Not just if he knows Zimmerman.
I wonder if he knows where he is.
At any rate, what Mr. Zaldivar is saying is that the justices are laboring under misunderstanding.
They don't know that there is a cheaper alternative in Obamacare, which misses the entire point.
It doesn't matter what it costs.
Broccoli's cheap compared to health insurance.
The government still cannot mandate that we all buy it.
This is such a pathetic, cheap attempt.
And it's again aimed at the Obama demographic of the stupid.
Oh, you mean it'd be constitutional to mandate health insurance if it's a cheap policy?
That's what they try to make people believe.
Should you blame your bank for high gasoline prices?
A new report out today.
This is from ABC.
New report out today says it's not just supply and demand and Middle East politics that determines the price of a barrel of oil.
Visa and MasterCard and the other card companies share some of the blame for the high price of gasoline.
Well, why don't we throw George Bush in this mix, too?
The new report by the National Association of Convenience Stores says that it's those so-called swipe fees at gas stations.
For the first time in history, the swipe fee is responsible for the increase in gasoline.
Mr. Limbaugh, I don't know.
What is the swipe fee?
That's the voice of Mr. New Castrati.
There is a charge anywhere 1.5% to 3% of the total bill every time you use a credit card.
That's how the credit card companies make their money in addition to the interest that they charge you.
AMAX is the highest.
AMEX is like 5% or 6% of the whole bill they get.
That's why a lot of retailers really love it when you pay cash because there's no swipe fee.
But the thing is, people have been using credit cards to buy gasoline for, well, as long as there have been credit cards.
Now, all of a sudden, in 2012, the swipe fee is responsible for the increase in gasoline.
The swipe fee.
And that means your bank.
You know what this is?
This is state-controlled media in league with Obama trying to gin up class warfare and class hatred against evil big banks, management, so-called rich businesses who want to do nothing but screw their customers.
Some cases kill them.
That's what the drug companies really want to do, you know, kill their customers.
And the oil companies want to screw their customers.
And big retail wants to rip off their customers.
If you listen to the left, the swipe fee.
And the USA Today says the gasoline price increase is likely finished.
This year's surge in gasoline prices appears over falling short of the record highs that some had feared heading into the peak driving season.
Prices have held at a national average of $392 a gallon this week.
That's below last year's $399 high.
By the behavior of the market, things are just running out of steam, said Patrick DeHaan, senior analyst for PricetrackerGasBuddy.com, barring any major event like refinery problems or Iran or Obama.
He didn't say that.
I threw it in.
I think prices have peaked.
So then you had gas prices.
It's over, folks.
You're not going to get any higher.
They say gasbuddy.com.
And any other increase in the price of gas is your bank from now on.
Swipe fee.
David, Indicott New York, thank you for waiting.
You're next on the EIB network.
Hi.
Good afternoon, Rush.
I have a question about the Buffet rule.
It's my understanding that Warren Buffett paid a lower income tax rate because the vast majority of his income was derived from dividend income capital gain of 15%.
Yeah, and long-term capital gains.
Right.
So with this new Buffett rule, my understanding that that's going to tax 30% over a million dollars of ordinary income.
That's right.
That's exactly right.
Now, the question is, will Warren Buffett actually be paying more in taxes as a result of the Buffet rule?
No.
He's not going to be reporting any more ordinary income than he already does.
So he will not be impacted by the Buffett rule.
Only his secretary will.
So we have another rule that's the Buffett rule.
They've run the numbers.
They've crunched it.
The Buffett rule is going to generate $5 billion.
And when that figure got out earlier this week, Obama and the Democrats switched their tune.
They said, well, the point of Buffett rule is not to raise revenue and reduce the deficit.
The point of the Buffett rule is fairness and make rich people pay their fair share.
Don't forget the AMT is the first Buffett rule, the first millionaire's tax.
This is purely a campaign device of class envy, class warfare, but it's not going to affect Buffett or Gates or anybody else who does not have earned income as opposed to investment income.
You're exactly right about that.
And Buffett, by the way, owes close to a billion dollars in back taxes anyway.
And he's fighting it.
He's fighting it.
So a tax increase named after a guy fighting the IRS over his tax bill.
You know, the GSA, the general services, the stuff we're learning about these party animals, this is Animal House.
This is Animal House in the regime.
The GSA could spend $5 billion on one outing to Las Vegas, then do videos to show us how and to rub our noses in it.
$5 billion.
We had the statistic yesterday.
If you cut every federal department by 1%, which has reduced the paperclips, at the size of this budget, a 1% cut would generate $33 or $36 billion, a 1% cut across the board, every government agency.
The Buffett rule, $5.1 billion.
Now, the White House tweeted yesterday that 1,470 people paid no federal income tax on $1 million incomes in 2009.
The Buffett rule will change that.
That is almost word for word how they gave us the now loathed and despised AMT.
Except it was about fewer people.
What was the number, certainly?
It was under 100 people or something that were legally not paying any tax.
They were taking advantage of the tax code.
They were millionaires and they owed no tax.
And somebody said, well, that just isn't right.
And they came up with the AMT alternative minimum, meaning no way nobody pays nothing anymore.
So this is just AMT2, named after Warren Buffett, who's fighting his own tax bill.
Let's see, who's next?
Boston.
Steve, great you called.
I'm glad you waited.
Welcome to the program.
Hey, Rosh, Megha Dittos.
Thanks from the People's Republic.
Thank you very much.
Great to have you here.
Got a question for you, and I was just wondering: do you think it's possible for this racial divide with the Trayvon thing originating from the White House?
I mean, could that possibly be Do I think it's possible that the racial divide or that the energy, the impetus, the racial divide might be coming from the White House?
Yeah, as a political means to divide the parties.
I mean, just like the Stephanopoulos thing with the birth control.
What would make you think that, Steve?
What possibly?
Well, because we haven't had.
Obama is supposed to be the president.
He could calm this whole situation down if he just came on and said everybody's got to cool it.
Calm down his minions, Al Sharpton.
But he didn't do that.
They're all coming out of the woodwork.
He didn't do that.
What Obama said was that if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon.
And everybody said so.
But that widely viewed as stoking it.
Then the new Black Panthers came along and offered a bounty, and nobody said anything about that.
Nobody criticized that.
And then yesterday, did you hear about this?
Maybe it was this morning.
I forget.
But Eric Holder actually praised Al Sharpton for his work in the Trayvon Martin.
I kid you not.
The Attorney General called him Reverend Al, praised Reverend Al for his great work in the Trayvon Martin case.
Look, let me speak bluntly here, Steve.
You've got to be very, very careful.
This is why you should not try this at home.
Leave it to the trained specialist like me.
There is no question that this is coming from the White House.
There is no question that the White House wants this kind of chaos and unrest in the culture.
They, for some reason, have determined that it is helpful for Obama's reelection because they believe that they can tie all of this to the existence of Republicans and conservatives, that the racial problems exist because of never-ending racism of the right, never-ending racism of Republicans.
That's why George Zimmerman is called in the New York Times a white Hispanic.
There are people in the race industry who became excited that this event took place because it allowed them to carry forward with their template, that we still are a nation essentially with slaves.
And so you couple that with what I think is a chip on Obama's shoulder about the founding of the country, the ingrained discrimination, his anger over it, and his opportunity here now to finally make it right.
I don't think there's any doubt.
At least we could say this.
If in the White House they wanted to cool this down, which they should do, they could do it.
All it would take, as you said, would be Obama addressing the nation, calm us down, and then speaking about it in genuine American terms, not racial terms.
If they wanted to do that, they could.
Other presidents have.
It's not happening here.
And I guarantee you, what everybody's waiting on now is for this state attorney and her decision.
It's a powder keg waiting to go off.
It's...
And there's nobody that I can see, tell me if I'm wrong, nobody that I see is doing anything to try to make sure that powder keg doesn't explode whenever this decision is reached.
Because no matter what the decision is, the potential for an eruption is real on either side.
I appreciate the call, Steve.
We got to take a break.
Back with much more after this.
Don't go away.
Reverend Sharpton's group held their meeting today at a convention in Washington, the National Action Network convention, and Eric Holder, the Attorney General, was there.
And we have a couple of soundbites.
Here's the first.
Thank you very much, Reverend Al.
I appreciate your kind words, and I'm especially grateful for your prayers and for your partnership, your friendship, and also for your tireless efforts to speak out for the voiceless, to stand up for the powerless, and to shine a light on the problems we must solve and the promises, the promises that we must fill.
Okay.
Here's the author of the Tawana Brawley Hulks being held up on a pedestal by the Attorney General of the United States, who thanks him for his prayers, his partnership, his friendship, and his tireless efforts to speak out for the voiceless.
And the Attorney General wasn't finished.
I know that many of you are greatly and rightly concerned about the recent shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
Three weeks ago, the Department of Justice launched an investigation into this incident, which remains open at this time and prevents me from talking in detail about this matter.
However, in recent weeks, Justice Department officials, including Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Tom Perez, have traveled to Sanford, Florida to meet with the Martin family, the community, and local authorities.
The Justice Department's peacemakers are continuing to meet with civil rights leaders, law enforcement officers, and area residents to address and to help alleviate community tensions.
What?
Justice Department peacemakers?
That's a new one.
Justice Department peacemakers.
Why didn't he bring in the folks from the UN at the same time?
One thing he did, he didn't mention the new Black Panthers.
They're going to be ticked.
You know, they're trying to stand up for the voiceless and the powerless and the fearful and the afraid.
I know.
I know they've got a wanted dead or alive poster.
The bounty is still out there for the new Black Panther Party.
And the Attorney General and his peacemakers from the Department of Justice are on the case in Sanford, Florida.
And they made every effort to talk to everybody in this case, except I didn't hear him say that he tried to find or reach out to and speak with the Zimmerman family.
Speaking of which, Zimmerman, nobody knows where he is.
His lawyer last night held a press conference.
Audio is not by 13.
Let's hit it.
We want to announce today, as of now, we are withdrawing his counsel for Mr. Zimmerman.
We've lost contact with him.
Up to this point, we've had contact every day.
He's gone on his own.
I'm not sure what he's doing or who he's talking to, but at this point, we're withdrawing his counsel.
If he wants us to come back as counsel, he will contact us.
He had contact as of, I believe, Sunday in the last couple of days.
He has not returned phone calls or text messages or emails.
Craig Saunner continued.
Here's the lawyer.
I still believe that he was acting in self-defense that night.
Nothing that I've said about him or this case has changed in any way.
I just can't proceed to represent a client who doesn't stay in contact with me.
Well, you don't have to tell everybody that.
I mean, there's still attorney-client privilege here.
By that, that has ticked off Alan Dershowitz at Harvard Law.
We've got the soundbite.
I don't have time for it right now, but he says that he is shocked at the behavior of Zimmerman's lawyers.
But they're probably scared too.
They're human beings.
They live in Sanford, Florida.
Their client is Zimmerman.
You'd be a little frightened too, given all that's going on.
Attorney General coming in, holding up and praising Al Sharpton with his peacemakers from the Justice Department for crying out loud for this is fastest three hours in media.
Two of them are already gone.
But never fear, my friends, and don't fret.
Another exciting excursion into broadcast excellence remains.
One more hour when we get back from this obscene profit time out here at the top of the hour.
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