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July 17, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:27
July 17, 2012, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Hi folks, how are you?
Great to have you back.
Rush Limbaugh, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have, serving humanity.
That's right, my friends, in service to all who live each and every day simply by showing up here at the distinguished and prestigious Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Here's the phone number if you want to be on the program, 800-282-2882 and the email address El Rushbo at EIBnet.com.
Brian, we're about to get creamed out there with a major thunderboomer.
I just went outside and looked.
We're starting to lose satellite signals, so we may be on generator power here in mere moments.
And I'm just advised because we've been all over the place with audio broadcast levels.
And the slightest confluence of irregularities sometimes causes a bastardization of the norm.
So I just wanted to have him in there prepared for anything that might happen here.
Now, I got a note, ladies and gentlemen, from a friend, after the phone call we had from Patty.
And he was very frustrated after the phone call we had from Patty.
He says, I hate the term trickle-down.
I despise the term trickle-down, and she used it twice.
And here's why my friend is upset with the term trickle-down in terms of trickle-down economics, trickle-down economy.
He says, trickle implies that most of the wealth stays with the wealthy and it doesn't.
Now, I know this is going to be radical.
This is a radical point to make, but he's exactly right.
And the simple proof of the statement is you could confiscate all of the wealth, confiscate all of it, not tax it, but just take it all of the top 1% that Obama has pointed out as the great enemy of the people.
You could confiscate all they've got.
You could run the United States government at current budget levels for less than a month.
I mean, you might even, you not even, might not even get two weeks out of it.
It is a myth that the top 1% have all of the wealth in this country.
It's the exact opposite.
Most of the wealth, now the wealth is defined as the GDP.
Most of the wealth is held by society.
It derives from the income you earn at work and the affordable goods and services which result from mass production and efficiency.
The idea that the top 1% have all the wealth is another lie.
And it derives from this ongoing argument about the gap between the rich and the poor and how much of the newly created wealth ends up with the 1% versus the rest.
But the idea that wealth trickles down, and also trickle is very slow, almost imperceptible, and that's not at all how the U.S. economy happens.
Then the second part of trickle-down, down, implies that business owners get their money first.
This, I think, is an excellent point.
When Obama's out there says, you got a business, you didn't build it.
Somebody else made that happen.
You know, it still frosts me when I see that, when I read it, when I hear him say it, it just, I can't tell you how angry it makes me.
That the president of the United States is out getting standing ovations, attacking hard work, success, and achievement.
But it's happening.
Look, I can understand if Barney Frank was doing it.
Some senator or congressman, the president of the United States, running for reelection, getting standing ovations, criticizing success with contempt.
Whoever called here and said that he sounds snarky and contemptuous when he says it is exactly right.
Down, trickle down, implies that business owners get their money first.
You know, business owners get their money last.
Everybody else gets paid first.
The employees get paid, then the bills that keep the business up and running, and then the materials necessary to build the product or to sell the product or the service or what have you.
The business owner gets paid last if the business is successful.
If you haven't owned a business, you don't know this.
Well, you might.
In this audience, this is what frustrates.
In this audience, I think everybody knows exactly what I'm talking about all the time.
I often say, man, I'd love just a week, just a week with some of these people giving money, for example, to Elizabeth Warren.
Some of these Hollywood people giving money.
I would love just if they were forced to listen to this show for a week.
Business owners get so the wealth in this country is not concentrated among the 1%.
Now, the 1% may be expert at building on their wealth, but the vast majority of the wealth in this country is spread around over 230 million people.
Gosh, you know, it's amazing the common sense economics that is not understood, not taught, and how easy it is to democratize.
It's always been that way.
There's nothing new about that.
It's just at the same time as a little frustrating.
You remember Obama's bridal registry?
This is another thing.
How in the world does this not get derided and mocked and made fun of?
The President of the United States actually put up a website called the Obama Event Registry and asked people getting married to, instead of accepting gifts from their guests, to have their guests donate in kind to Obama's reelection effort.
And they did this with a straight face and with total seriousness and sincerity.
Well, the New York Post reported yesterday that it's not working.
President Obama's bizarre marriage theme fundraising scheme has been a total flop instead, it says.
The desperate initiative dubbed the Event Registry being made fun of by event planners and couples and shows how desperate the Obama regime is to keep up with Mitt Romney's fundraising.
Campaign officials launched the initiative in late June, the same month that Obama raised just $71 million compared to Romney's $100 million.
So far, the event registry has been all but ignored.
Even though Facebook, Twitter, and other networks have been a strong suit for the campaign, they've done their best.
Twitter, Facebook, they've done their best out there, but it just hasn't worked.
Oh, speaking of Twitter and Facebook, let me find this.
Where does I, I've got to, I've got, I've got to find Zuckerberg.
I've got to find this story.
Where did I put this story?
Did I put it near the end?
The Facebook billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg, number 40 on the Forbes list.
Zuckerberg refinanced the mortgage on his house.
He's got a house in California, $5.9 million house, and he's got an adjustable rate mortgage.
He refinanced it.
It's a 30-year adjustable rate, so he's taking a little risk.
But since he's willing to do it, he got an interest rate of just over 1%.
And he has reduced his payment over the course of the 30 years if nothing changes to, he's reduced his payments by $750,000.
Now, I want to find the story because it's, there's a, I actually have two of them.
One of the stories kind of mocks him.
Why in the world is Zuckerberg have a mortgage and why is Zuckerberg out hunting for a deal?
Well, darn it.
I just now remembered that I've got it, but I don't remember where I put it, which is the problem, folks, when the show takes place with literally 300 pieces of paper every day.
And it's not possible to do it on a computer.
Anyway, the story is complaining about how a rich guy can get this kind of interest rate when you, an average American, can't.
You don't have the collateral necessary to get a 30-year adjustable rate mortgage.
His interest rate is basically the way it's termed in the story, free money.
They are lending Zuckerberg money for less than it costs them to get the money.
It's free money.
The interest rate they're charging him is less than what the bank is charged to get the money from the Fed.
Hmm?
Well, that's why I wish I could find the story.
It's a function of him willing to do a 30-year adjustable rate.
Who knows in 10 years the rate could go to 10%.
You never know.
And it's also because he's got all kinds of assets as collateral to be able to withstand a huge uptick in the ARM.
Now, the real question, the real question is, here's a guy.
I know a lot of its paper, but still, he's number 40 on the Forbes list, what, $12 or $14 billion.
Yeah, why not just buy it outright?
Why mortgage the thing?
Well, the answer is, well, no, because for him, the tax cuts, when you're at his level, you only get to deduct.
In fact, you may not get to deduct anything anymore on a mortgage.
It used to be the most recent rule, unless it's been wiped out, was that somebody in Zuckerberg's income level could only take the mortgage interest deduction on the first million of the mortgage.
And that may have been totally wiped out.
If it hasn't been, it will be at some point.
So he's either one of two things, establishing a credit rating, making a payment every month just to establish the credit rating.
Everybody wants and needs a credit rating.
And then he's got credit cards.
Trust me on this.
The second thing, and probably as likely, if not more, Why use your own when you can use somebody else's, particularly when they're going to give it to you?
The bank is essentially giving him the money.
Why use your own money when somebody else will give it to you?
So he's basically having a $6 million house bought for him by the bank.
And that's that.
Well, I don't, I can't explain.
Snerdley's asking me, you mean you tell me this guy with $14 billion cares about the expense of a $5 million house?
I don't, he might.
He's not that far removed from being a penniless college student.
He's still in the formative years.
You go from having nothing to having all kinds of money.
It takes a while to accept that you've got it and that they're not going to take it away from you.
Now, what if Facebook goes belly up next year?
It could look at how fast it came out of nowhere.
And then look how fast Yahoo took the plunge.
These things can come and go.
So value base might be somewhat decent.
I don't know.
But the real thing here is the interest rate is so low.
It's 1.05% that he's basically got a house that somebody else is buying.
Now he's paying it back.
I think his monthly payment's like $21,000.
Something like that.
And here's the headline: Business Insider.
That's not the story I had.
But here's Mark Zuckerberg is so rich, he lives in his $6 million house for free.
Zuckerberg taking the mortgage because the interest rate's so low that he can invest the cash that he would have spent on the house risk-free and get a higher rate of return than the rate at which he's borrowing.
So he buys a house for $6 million, and rather than take his $6 million and sink into it, he's going to take the $6 million, this is theoretical, that he would have sunk into the house and put it in some other investment that's going to have a growth rate far greater than what if he bought the house.
Meanwhile, it's not his money he's buying the house with.
He just refinanced with a 30-year adjustable rate loan starting at 1.05% because 1.05% is below the current rate of inflation, which is somewhere between 2% and 3%.
Zuckerberg essentially is borrowing for free, according to Greg McBride, who is a financial analyst with Bankrate Inc., Bankrate, better up in North Palm Beach.
One of my close friends, one of my golfing buddies, owns BankRate.
It doesn't stop BankRate from ripping me in their editorials, but still they do.
And still, he's a good friend of mine.
They monitor, among other things, BankRate monitors interest rates to the nth degree and offers advice to clients that pay for it.
So Zuckerberg is still paying the bank something every month, the principal on his loan.
But that's not really a cost because he's getting equity in his house.
He's putting money into a piggy bank.
If he ever sold the house, he'd get all that money back, and the amount of money he spent on living in the house would be close to zero.
So if anything, he would turn a profit.
But this deal, that 1.07 interest rate is not available to you.
It's a 30-year ARM, and he's only able to get it because he's got all those assets out there that will handle if that ARM, if that interest rate skyrockets to 5% or 10% down the road.
You know, as happened to many people in the subprime mortgage area, they had ARMs.
They invested them.
All of a sudden, the rate went up and they couldn't pay the monthly payment.
And they got foreclosed on and they came in.
That's not fair.
It's not fair.
Wait a minute.
You signed the ARM deal.
You had to know it's adjustable rate.
You had to know that interest rate may not stay there for the whole 30 years you own.
Well, that's not fair.
Not fair.
I didn't know the interest rate would jump up that.
Remember all those stories?
That's why you don't get 30-year adjustable rate loans because unless you have the assets to back up the wild fluctuations that take place.
Okay, I got to take a brief time out here, my friend Sit Tight, back with much more on the EIB network.
Don't go away.
And we're back here on the cutting edge of societal evolution.
Snurdley just asked me in the break, you have deals like this.
I do not.
I probably shouldn't get this personal, but I'll just tell you, folks, how do I do this?
My experience has been just the opposite of what we have seen in this Zuckerberg story.
I have never, well, no, that's not, I can't say never, but mostly when people see me, they see a chance to charge even more.
I don't see these deals.
I don't see all of this funny manipulation, great opportunities.
I hear about it.
I hear about all this stuff, but my experience is I'm overcharged everything.
Nobody is ever offering me opportunities to save money.
Everybody's always trying to find a way to get into my back pocket.
Let's just put it that way.
So all this talk about how, well, all I'm telling you is that many things that you think that you know about it isn't the way you think.
And there's so many myths out there about wealthy people.
And for every Zuckerberg out there, I guarantee you, there's a sucker paying 3.7% on his loan.
Not one.
No, I'm not telling you that.
No, no, no, no.
I'm not telling you that.
I'm just telling you that I know people.
No, I better not go there.
I don't know.
It's just basic economics is, to me, something that's just common sense.
It seems so hard to understand basic economics.
Like the question, okay, you got to, Zuckerberg, a $6 million house, a $7 million house.
There were two rules of thumb.
One is buy it.
Don't owe anybody anything.
Never, ever go into debt.
And the other rule of thumb is use somebody else's money.
Don't tie up your money.
If you can get that house at a 1% interest rate in a 30-year mortgage, take it.
You're living free.
And then take whatever you would use to buy the house and invest it in something with a much greater return.
In other words, the Zuckerberg, I guess the moral of that story is the rich people don't want to tie up their money in real estate, which might not go up as fast as some other investment.
And that's the thinking behind Zuckerberg's move.
But I don't know how many people get a 1% interest rate.
And we are back, and we return to the phones.
People have been waiting patiently, such as Bruce in Sullivan, Indiana.
Hi, Bruce.
Thanks for waiting.
Great to have you here.
Rush, it truly is an honor.
I hope you never get tired of people telling you that because it truly is an honor to speak with you today.
I appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
My comment was, you know, about this success business model that the president, he believes that hard work and intelligence doesn't support to that.
So, you know, I started applying his illogic to a couple different scenarios.
And when I thought about how he addressed the nation when we killed Bin Laden, I wondered why he thanked SEAL Team 6 because wasn't by using his logic, wasn't they just people that were in the right place at the right time?
Wasn't it the people who trained them and the people who manufactured the helicopters and the people who made their Kevlar vests and their rifles?
Wasn't they the people who actually were, you know, I mean, now that you mention this, I mean, Obama praised SEAL Team 6, but he did say I and I and I.
And he clearly wanted to leave the impression that he essentially pulled a trigger.
Right.
That he's the one that made it.
He's the one that had the guts.
He's the one.
They just executed the brilliant order that he conceived and so forth.
And he had to thank SEAL Team 6.
It's a military unit.
He's going in.
He knows that as a Democrat, he's looked at as a dove.
So there's a calculated risk that he's willing to take in also crediting the SEALs.
But by the same token, you come with these analogies.
If government is always the real reason you made it, how come government is never the reason something fails?
Exactly.
And, you know, I heard the other day somebody say that Romney needs to realize that he's in a UFC fight.
And I agree, not only does he need to realize that he's in the fight for his life, but he's not only fighting the guy across the ring, he's fighting everybody in the room.
So I can't understand why they're so passive and going with what you've been saying during your show today about how, you know, it's time to take the gloves off and leave everything on the table.
And, you know, like this issue with releasing records and this.
Why isn't it something simple, logical that the Romney campaign say, okay, you want to know about me?
Fine.
Let's meet next Thursday.
You bring all your school records.
You bring all the planning to get for five years and we'll release it all together.
That's what Trump is advising him to do.
Well, I mean, I don't know.
If you want to see my tax records, fine.
Let's see your transcripts from Columbia and Harvard.
Let's see all this stuff.
Exactly.
And just put the right back on them every time.
Every time they come up with something, because I don't believe Romney has anything to hide.
Let's do it.
Well, the people, the wizards are smart on our side say that that's not the way to do this.
That kind of thing will backfire.
Well, I don't see the logic in it.
I mean, I could see it would backfire if Romney went out there by himself and released it because the media would spin it.
But if you have him and he invites Barack to stand on the stage with him and they release everything together, I think that'd be such a media fire spot.
Let's take the occasion of your call.
Let's listen to the new Obama ad, which basically says that Romney is a tax evader.
This is the ad this ran on Obama's campaign website, BarackObama.com, and the YouTube channel.
The ad is entitled Makes You Wonder.
I'm Barack Obama, and I approve this message.
Tax havens, offshore accounts, carried interest.
Mitt Romney has used every trick in the book.
Romney admits that over the last two years, he's paid less than 15% in taxes on $43 million in income.
Makes you wonder if some years he paid any taxes at all.
We don't know because Romney has released just one full year of his tax returns and won't release anything before 2010.
You know what?
I put out as much as we're going to put up.
What is Mitt Romney hiding?
That's the Obama ad.
And I think I read during the program today, and I don't know if this is accurate.
It was in quotes.
I read something about Romney saying, I'm just not going to give them tens of thousands of pages to pick through.
I'm just not going to do it.
I'm just not going to give them 10,000 pages to pick through.
I'll let them go ahead and speculate all they want, but I'm not going to give them 10,000 pages to pick through, knowing what they'll do with it.
So he's rolling the dice.
I'll withstand these ads.
So last night on Hannity, he talked to James Carvel.
Carville's got a new book out called Some Middle Class Stupid.
And Hannity said, President Obama's blaming Fox News, Talk Radio, me, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, everybody but himself for his own policies.
Do you not say in some way, James, the man has failed?
If you're asking me, would they have put a provision in that?
Sure, why not?
I mean, somebody's going to be president for three and a half years.
Would you go back and say, well, do you disagree with this?
Well, sure.
But overall, I think this president's done a doggone good job.
Has he made some mistakes?
Of course he has.
What did he say there?
He really got tongue-tied, stammering and stuttering after hearing my name in the question.
If you're asking me, should it happen?
Whether they put a provision in there?
Sure, why not?
I mean, somebody's going to be president for three and a half years.
Well, you go back and say, well, you disagree with this.
Sure.
Overall.
See, folks, I know James Carville, and I can't believe he's got a wife, Mary Madeline.
He got kids.
The family left Washington because of what's happening to the schools there.
They relocated to New Orleans.
Now, you can't tell me that in quiet moments of solitude in his home in the Big Easy.
You can't tell me he sits there and listens to Obama say, you got a business, you didn't build that.
Somebody else made that happen.
You can't tell me Carville agrees with that.
I can't imagine Carville would run out and say that himself as a surrogate on the campaign trail.
Yeah.
Yeah, they've been out there.
You didn't do that.
Everybody know you had nothing to do with that.
Somebody else made that happen.
Everybody knows that.
You know, what about your campaign business?
Well, yeah, I would have been nothing without Bill Clinton.
If Bill Clinton had a hard me, I'd have been nothing.
I'd still be in Gumbo.
I don't believe he believes this.
But his job is to get Democrats elected.
That's what he's got to do.
And he'll probably get mad at me for speculating what he really believes in here.
But this is.
Well, I'm watching it.
I figured I can't hear it, obviously.
What is it on the no, but what?
Yeah.
Okay.
Now, let's see, Justin Waters.
Oh, Graham Soundbite 7.
Last night on Anderson Cooper 119, he interviewed David Axarada.
Cooper said, are there parallels, in your opinion, between the Bush campaign, what they did to Kerry, and what your team is doing to Mitt Romney right now?
Basically, try to define him based on what's considered by his campaign strength.
No, because what was done back then was to take a guy who was a certified war hero and to suggest that somehow he wasn't.
And that was grossly unfair.
People don't really know Governor Romney, even though he's run for president twice, is because he's never told them who he is.
He's never told them what motivates him.
He's never put his own experience into any kind of framework that people could appreciate.
And the real question is to address that campaign.
Why do they feel that simply running negative ads against the president from the beginning was sufficient?
This is surreal.
These guys are the architects of negative ads.
Anyway, what Axelod's saying here is we're not swiftboating Romney.
In a sense, this is Swiftboating is telling the truth about somebody.
The Swiftboat vets were telling the truth of their service with John Kerry and how he was unfit and how he was lying about it.
The Obama campaign is lying about Romney, which is what they think Swiftboating is.
Okay, brief timeout.
Sit tight, my friends.
Back with much more after this.
Truckee, California, up next.
This is Toby.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Hello.
Hello, Rush.
How are you?
I'm fine.
How are you, Toby?
I'm doing good.
I was telling Sterling, I understand and I agree with 110% of everything you're saying about him, but I think we're giving him far too much of our time.
Talking about him as much as you do since the week ago when he brought up this crap with Romney, that's all we hear about.
All the talk shows and everything else.
We need to get back to the numbers on, you know, if everything he's done has created something, then he's responsible for the unemployment.
Okay.
Wait, so you think I am talking too much about Romney?
No, talking too much about what Obama wants you to talk about.
I'm talking too much about what Obama wants me to talk about.
Exactly.
Now, what does Obama want us to talk about?
The fact that Romney is a felon.
Ah.
Okay.
So most of the last two days, I have been incredulous at what Obama is saying.
Right.
I've been playing this soundbite over and over with Obama basically saying, you started a business.
You didn't do it on your own.
I agree with it, Rush.
I'm not saying that.
It infuriates me every time I hear it.
My point is, I think we're giving him too much airtime.
He gets enough of that from the media.
I think we need to get back on talking about what he's created, the unemployment numbers, people out of work, all of the crap that he's created, not the fact that, you know, he helped us all start our businesses.
Okay.
Well, just so you know, I'm also getting emails and notes from people who tell me I'm spending too much time talking about Romney.
You think I'm spending too much time talking about Obama?
I got somebody else telling me I'm spending too much time talking about Romney.
So basically, you think that Obama has ropodoped me.
No, no, I think he's trying to ropa-dope everybody.
My point is, I guess maybe it's my opinion, is I've just heard enough crap about what he hasn't done and all of the other stuff.
And I'd like to get back to the point of maybe helping to build up the conservative message again.
You know, it was just a week and a half ago that I raised the very important question of, is Romney simply reciting what everybody already knows about the economy going to be enough?
You want me to sit here every day and say, folks, you know what the unemployment rate is?
Look at job creation.
Look at the debt.
Look at this guy has destroyed the—I'm blue in the face talking about it.
So I raised the specter.
Maybe it is, folks, that because so many people don't care anymore about a failing economy because they're not harmed by it, that maybe just saying it's the economy is stupid or just pointing out how rotten it is, maybe Romney's campaign has to be about more than that.
And we spent two days talking about that.
My point is, we have 15 hours a week here, and I don't think there's anything that gets biased.
There isn't anything we don't mention.
Unless I judge it to be irrelevant and unimportant.
And I just, like I've always said, if I don't talk about it, it's not worth you knowing about it.
You need to trust me on this stuff.
But I don't know.
I need to talk about all this stuff in context, in totality, as it happens.
If anything, I have been concerned that I have maybe been overdoing it on Obama's statement that you got a business, you didn't build it.
Somebody else made it.
I thought I was going to get an email.
Come on, Rush.
He knows you're going to focus on that.
So you stop talking about the economy.
He's trying to distract you on your phone.
I thought I would hear that.
But at any rate, I think the totality of what's happening here has to be discussed so all this stuff can be kept in context.
But I appreciate the call, Toby.
Thanks very much.
Hello, folks.
Another exciting excursion into broadcast excellence is over.
And just in case you don't know it, the unemployment rate is 8.2%.
The national debt is rising.
Obama continues to spend money like it's never been spent before.
We're borrowing it like it's never been borrowed before.
This economy really sucks.
I don't know if you know that or not, but this economy is in bad shape.
And there's a guy that's in charge of it.
His name is Barack Obama.
You may have heard of him.
He's the president of the United States.
Mitt who?
It's not about Rums.
It's about Obama.
Obama sucks.
He's the guy that's to blame for all this.
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