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March 7, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:47
March 7, 2013, Thursday, Hour #3
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We are back, ladies and gentlemen, as you have come to depend on and count on El Rushbo here behind the golden EIB microphone, 800-282-2882.
Here's the phone number if you want to be on the program today.
Open line Friday, of course, coming up tomorrow.
Now, according to Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, the Attorney General Eric Holder, wrote Rand Paul a letter, I guess somewhat recently, to confirm that President Obama does not have the authority to kill an American on U.S. soil in a non-combat situation.
And Jay Carney quoted from the letter that Holder sent Rand Paul today.
Now, Rand Paul's still doing interviews about the filibuster.
He's making the rounds of the cable.
I don't know why.
Once he's spoken here, that pretty much covers it.
But I guess his office has him on all the cable networks as well.
And Eric Holder wrote Rand Paul a letter today, confirm Obama doesn't have the authority to kill American citizens on U.S. soil in a non-combat situation.
And he quoted, does the president have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat or on American soil?
Carney says Holder wrote, the answer is no.
So, and I did see a graphic that Rand Paul shortly after this interview ended, by the way.
It was within 10 minutes of this interview ending, by the way, that I saw a little Chiron graphic on TV where said the White House had either responded to Rand Paul or had asked to see him or some such thing.
So apparently the news is out that the White House has responded to him.
But it's only from Jay Carney.
We haven't heard any confirmation yet from Rand Paul's office.
Joe Flacco is the quarterback of the Baltimore Ravens, and he just signed the largest contract, any position, any player, the richest, the wealthiest, the biggest contract in NFL history.
So he is the highest paid quarterback ever.
He's the highest paid player.
But there's an interesting story here from Americans for Tax Reform, that because Joe Flacco lives in Maryland, he doesn't have the most money.
He's the highest paid, but he lives in a state where 52% of every dollar he earns is taken in taxes.
And so what Americans for Tax Reform did was compare what Flacco would keep if he lived in a no-income tax state, such as Texas.
He could play for the Houston Texans or the Dallas Cowboys.
In Florida, he could play for the Jaguars, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, or the Dolphins.
In Tennessee, he could play for the Titans.
And in, well, that would be it.
So here are the numbers.
Right now, with the money that the annual that Flacco is making, he'll pay $8.7 million in federal taxes.
He will pay $1.7 million in state and county taxes.
His total tax liability every year, what they've done here, he's not going to be paid this way, but they've, because a lot of it is bonus money, but they've amortized it over the length of the deal.
It's a six-year contract.
So they've taken, it's basically $120.1 million, I think, was the deal, and they've divided it by six, and they've got an annual, and they're using it here as an example.
He may not be actually paid that way, but if he were, this is what it'd be workout to, he will pay $10.44 million in taxes.
If he lived in Florida, instead of paying $10.44 million in taxes, he would pay $8.7 million in taxes.
So essentially, it's costing him an additional $1.7 million in taxes.
Live in Maryland.
Now, not that he has a choice.
The Ravens, well, he could have gone free agent if he wanted.
He could have tested the market.
But it's not really that point.
The point is the difference.
Now, the question, most people don't make this kind of money nowhere near it.
All they can do is dream of it.
And most people would probably tell you, well, look, if I'm making $20 million a year and I still have $9.8 million after taxes, that's plenty for me, man.
I don't need any more than that.
People who are earning $100,000, $50,000.
I have always, I have found it fascinating throughout my life.
I love learning how people think.
And I've been fascinated when conversations have come up asking people what they think is rich, what they think is wealthy.
Now, I'm not drawing a distinction between the two.
Just what they think is big money.
And it's never the same from person to person.
It's always different.
But the one thing that I've often found that's in common, people who imagine or dream of, say, making $20 million a year, the idea that at the end of the tax year they still have $9.5 million, God, I don't care.
There'd be plenty.
But then you bring it down to their level.
Okay, you make $100,000 a year and you end up with $48,000.
How do you feel about that?
Well, it's not the same.
$48,000 is a lot different than $9 million.
I know it is, but what about the principal?
You have earned.
You went out.
You played well enough.
You secured a deal.
You have established your worth.
Your worth is what somebody will pay you.
That's how your worth is determined.
Sad to say, but that's what it is.
Not your self-worth, not your worth as a human being to society, none of that.
But in terms of what you earn, you're worth what somebody will pay you.
That's why all this talk about baseball players and athletes overpaid.
No, they're not.
Somebody's willing to pay them that.
They're worth it to somebody.
None of our business, none of my business.
They're worth it to somebody.
Well, in this case, Flacco's worth $120 million.
He'll never get paid that, by the way.
This deal is never going to last that long because of the salary cap and other things.
He is going to have three or four years here where he's going to earn 20 million a year as the way it all averages out.
And he's going to end up keeping $8.5 million, $9 million of it every year.
That's plenty.
Rushed.
I don't need any more.
Well, you're not worried.
You're not bothered that if you're in that situation that taxing authorities are taking nearly $12 million from you, $11 million from you?
No, because $9 million leftover is fine.
And this is how easy it is to sell tax increases on the rich because most people see what they end up with after the taxes.
They don't calculate what's being taken away, and they certainly don't calculate what's being taken away versus the gross.
They just see the net, somebody's left, and they think, man, I could somebody making $100,000 a year, $50,000, $9 million, they'd be fat city and wouldn't care about anything else.
Understandably so.
Until the day comes that they earn it.
And then it all changes.
Then they get just as outraged as people who are earning it are.
So you have Obama and the boys, every liberal running around saying, you've got enough.
Why didn't anybody ever say that to Bill Gates?
Why doesn't anybody ever say that to Warren Buffett?
Why doesn't anybody say that to Richard Branson?
You've got enough.
$60 billion, $40 billion, who needs that kind of money?
But it's never a question of need.
It's what you end up being worth to somebody.
Now, in the case of Gates and Buffett, nobody's paying them that.
That's the result of risk-taking via investment or business investment growth, taking a risk on some kind of business proposition.
Nobody gets paid $60 billion.
But I don't know.
I just find it fascinating.
And Flacco, if you could ask him, you know, Joe, if you played somewhere else, you'd be keeping $10.5 million instead of 9.
Whatever it is, I don't know if he would care, but it fascinates me.
Let's go to the audio soundbites.
I mentioned that the president is having a little trouble here with the sequester and the White House tours being shut down.
And in fact, in the Politico, there's a story: New Democrat worry.
Did the president cry wolf?
President Obama hopes to spark a pitchfork revolt against Republicans over sequester budget cuts.
But many Democrats fret that he's undermined that effort with an early strategy marred by hype and poor planning and muddled messaging.
Imagine that.
Democrats saying all of that about Obama.
Hype, poor planning, muddled messaging.
The stakes in the sequester debate aren't quite as high as they were during the debt ceiling battle of 2011.
But Democrat veterans of the Obama-Republican wars of 2009 and 2010 are getting a creepy sense of deja vu from a White House messaging shop they believe fumbled the rollouts of the stimulus in the healthcare initiatives.
No, they never got above 50%.
They're very worried here that these sequester cuts can't find them.
And when you can find them, they're cuts that don't make any sense.
We're shutting down White House tours while Obama takes a 20-vehicle caravan, one half a mile, by the way.
That's how far the trip was from the White House to dinner with the Republican ruling class guys last night.
Half a mile.
20 cars.
How many people in those cars do you think attended dinner?
One.
Well, I don't know.
Maybe McCain and Graham drove over there with a bunch.
I have no idea.
But I guarantee you that the people in 20 cars were not at dinner for half a mile.
And yet we can't keep the White House open for tours.
And it's not playing well for Obama in the media.
The media is ABC.
We have Diane Sawyer, Jonathan Carl talking about it.
I mean, even Diane Sawyer, a little upset about this last night on World News tonight.
The White House says they're forced to shut down White House tours.
Little kids are disappointed, and people have been emailing us today saying, really?
Is that the only way to save money?
Yeah, see, that's not the way this is supposed to happen.
What's supposed to happen is that little kids are supposed to be running around acting like they did when the Republicans were going to starve the little back in 1995.
Back in 1995, when these little urchins are going to be starved to death, they were writing letters to the Republicans.
Dear Mr. Congressman, I can't study when I'm hungry.
I can't live if I don't have food.
I don't want to die.
Please don't starve me.
Please don't cut the school lunch button.
Little kids writing letters to that effect.
Now, what they're supposed to have been doing here is writing letters to Republicans, blaming them for shutting down the White House tours, but they're not.
They're blaming Obama.
That's not how it's supposed to go.
Democrats are worried.
Here's Jonathan Carl, his report last night.
So the White House wants the media to go find victims and children who are victims.
They want to go find victims, willing to blame the Republicans, but it backfired because they're now victims of the White House, not Republicans.
And the Republicans, in fact, may end up being the good guys here, which could be Obama's worst nightmare.
For tourists visiting the nation's capital today, the decision to close the White House has hit with a thud.
What do you guys make of this decision for the White House to say that they're going to cut White House tours?
We talked via Skype to a sixth grade class from Waverly, Iowa.
Just told their White House tour next week has been canceled.
How big a deal is it to be able to go to the White House?
It's very important.
They'll remember it for the rest of their lives.
Now they've launched a Facebook campaign to get the White House reopened.
The message?
The White House is our house.
Please let us visit.
We ran into the Speaker of the House.
The president says he has to cancel the tours because of the budget cuts.
We're open.
Americans are welcome.
So Boehner said, well, we're open at the Capitol.
Have them come by and see us.
Now, you might remember, they opened a massive visitor center in the U.S. Capitol down in the basement.
Dingy Harry actually went to the floor of the Senate to complain about how bad it is down there in the summertime because you can smell the tourists.
Remember that?
They come in there.
They got all this body odor.
They stink.
They smell.
It really was not a good idea.
Nevertheless, Boehner is welcoming them.
How about these kids?
The White House is our house.
Please let us visit.
And of course, everybody knows the Republicans aren't in the White House.
They got nothing to say about whether it's open or not.
And then Jonathan Carl did the math.
He did the math.
He figures out the White House is only saving $18,000 a week during this.
The White House says it is canceling the tours because sequester spending cuts have sliced $84 million out of the Secret Service's $1.6 billion budget.
They are the ones who secure the tours.
I wouldn't say how much this saves, so we did some math.
Tours are open 20 hours a week and use 30 uniformed Secret Service officers at about $30 an hour.
Total saved?
Approximately $18,000 a week.
Now, what does it cost for 20 cars to transport Obama a half a mile?
Time you add up all the man hours to fuel costs, everything else involved, to take Obama a half mile to half dinner with a Republican old guard.
See, there's no need.
The shutdown of the White House tours is purposeful.
They wanted people to be disappointed.
They wanted kids and everybody to be sad.
They wanted people planned for this years in advance, certainly by a minimum of a month that you have to plan one of these things.
They wanted people disappointed.
They wanted people sad and let down.
And they wanted people blaming the Republicans for it.
And it's backfiring, not working.
Back to the phone.
So you go, this is Jeannie in Hamilton, Montana.
Jeannie, one of my all-time top 10 favorite female names.
How are you?
I'm good, but I'm sorry, my name's Janine, which isn't on your top 10.
Janine?
Yes.
Janine, is that your name?
That's my name.
Janine.
I'm sad it's not in the top 10.
Well, it may.
You never know.
But here's some good news.
I called you years ago and described myself as moderate.
Between you and Obama, I now describe myself as severely conservative.
What changed?
Oh, what hasn't changed?
I have some observations about Obama's dinner show last night.
Yep.
I think that you'd have to be so stupid to think that Obama has any intention of trying to build bridges or come to an agreement with these old guard guys.
He was just using them as pawns to get past the sequester bad publicity and back on demagoguing them for being unwilling, no matter how hard he tries, to come to an agreement.
And then, to make it worse, McCain and Graham go on TV and go from being pawns to becoming useful idiots by eating their young on national TV.
That's about as dumb as an ashtray.
I think you're exactly right.
I think that Obama's using these guys to create this optic of bipartisanship.
Absolutely.
And then these guys come back, and what I think Graham has said further, he's commented further, he said, look, this paranoia that these libertarians have and some of these extreme leftists is just absurd.
So he's basically saying that Rand Paul is a libertarian and some of these left-wing extremists who think that we're going to start killing Americans with drones is literally absurd.
It doesn't deserve a half a minute of discussion.
It's absurd to accuse the president of it, and he resents it.
And I resent him.
Because you think he doesn't get it.
Oh, he clearly does not get it.
Well, how did ⁇ you know, you were once a moderate.
I was once a liberal.
Well, and you were proud of it.
I remember when you called, you were proud of it.
You were proud of the way you positioned yourself between me and Obama and so forth.
Let me tell you one other private story.
When they tried to get you after Sandra Fluke, a local jeweler came out in support of you.
I had broken my hand and had to really maul my wedding ring off, and I had delayed getting it fixed because it cost quite a bit.
The day he came out and stood up for you, this local jeweler, I went and got my wedding ring fixed.
So now when I look at my ring, I think of you and my husband.
Oh, God bless.
God bless you.
That is a wonderful, heartwarming story.
Janine, Janine, now in the top 10 all-time favorite female names.
How can it not be, folks?
Well, guess what?
The President of the United States has just signed another law.
And this law is the Violence Against Women Act.
No, no, it means you can't.
It's not, it doesn't permit it.
It's against violence.
You can't be violent.
I guess you could up until the law was.
It used to be okay to be violent against women, but now we fixed it.
Because now we have a law because Obama just signed it, the Violence Against Women Act.
I don't have the act right in front of me, but I can guarantee you it's about much more than violence against women.
But you see, it's classic.
It's classic.
Somebody proposes this thing under the guise that women are being beat to a pulp in this country because of the Republican war on women.
Women are being beat up.
They're being creamed.
I mean, they're just being mistreated all over the place.
We need a federal law saying you can't do it anymore.
And so now the Democrats get all of this credit for being compassionate and tolerant and understand protective of women.
The whole idea is to create the notion that there's some people out there that are violent toward women.
They're obviously a bunch of Neanderthal Republicans.
We're going to now be able to punish them.
And Obama right there says, this law will help bring more offenders to justice.
So I guess there were outs.
So you go out and be violent toward women.
I guess there are ways you could get away with it that now you can't.
Because we've really gotten serious about it now.
Okay, Elizabeth in Louisville.
Great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Hi.
How are you?
Very well.
Thank you.
I just want to say that I'm very proud.
Hold it just a second.
Obama's talking about the survivors.
He's not talking about the survivors, women survivors in this country.
The survivors of violence against women.
I'm sorry to interrupt you out there, Elizabeth, but I couldn't let this go by.
He's now praising the survivors, women who have survived all of this hideous violence that's committed against and on them every day in this country.
Okay, I had to get that in.
Back to you now, Elizabeth.
Well, I agree with you.
I thought there were laws about that before this was fine.
But at any rate, I just want to tell you that I'm a lifelong Democrat, and I'm very proud to say that in the future I'm going to be voting for Rand Paul.
I'm proud of you.
Interesting.
You're in Louisville, and so you obviously were impressed with what he said.
What stood out last night for you?
Everything he had to say for those 13 hours was substantive.
He was not just reciting the alphabet.
He wasn't reading a poem.
He was fighting for civil liberties in this country, something that I thought Democrats were supposed to be doing every day.
Standing up and defending our basic American civil liberties.
And if Rand Paul is the only voice out there who's not running for cover and not waiting to see what everyone else thinks about it, I'm voting for him.
He didn't take a poll before he did this, I assume.
He just went out there and did it the way traditional civil libertarians are supposed to do.
Is civil liberty, is that pretty high up in your rank of issues that matter most to you?
Absolutely.
As an American, we have to defend our Constitution.
And that's what I saw him doing for 13 hours last night.
And for most of the time, he was out there alone on that floor.
They all rallied around at the end.
But I know there are a great many Democrats out there who feel exactly the way I do.
Well, who are some of the Democrats that you like that are noteworthy in your mind for standing up for civil liberties?
I've always admired the Clintons and did vote for Bill Clinton twice.
If you don't tell anybody, I'll let you know that I did vote for Mitt Romney this time around.
You did, really.
I was going to, that was my next question to you.
And you didn't bargain for this.
And if you don't, if you don't want to have to answer my question, feel free.
You don't have to.
But I don't get very many acknowledged, admitted Democrats that call me.
And so you are one.
And I'm very curious about Democrats today, particularly the ones that did vote for Obama and continue to support him, which is not you.
You voted for Romney.
But what I was going to ask you was, having acknowledged your position and the importance you place on civil liberties, I was going to ask you what your opinion of Obama's economic policies are and whether you support them.
But you voted for Romney, so I know what your answer would be there.
Exactly.
But I'm really curious.
I think that Democrats are made up of two different kinds of people.
In fact, not just Democrats.
But like I mentioned yesterday, I was talking to two 25-year-old people over the weekend about the things that matter most to them.
And it's gay marriage and gay rights and a number of things like that.
And they asked me what I thought about it, and I told them.
And I said, here's the problem with all this.
People your age, you're obsessed with the notion and nothing wrong with it, that why should it matter who you love?
It's a beautiful thing love is.
And why should it be anybody's business?
And so, but I said, but marriage means something.
Marriage is a man and a woman.
I said, Republicans did not invent it.
It's something that derives from tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years of human civilization.
It's been shown to be the best way to raise children, to have children raise children.
So the human being is the only mammal that is entirely helpless for two decades and maybe a little bit less.
But I said, you know, a dog or a horse, a horse is born standing.
A dog or cat is on its own in six weeks.
They wean it from its mother and it's off and it's self-sufficient.
A human being doesn't know right from wrong, doesn't know morality until it's taught.
And it's an institution that's been perfected for this, and I think it's under assault.
It's being corrupted because people want financial benefits.
Anyway, I explained all this to them, and I said that the liberals have leaders who are radicals who are trying to corrupt as much of the tradition and institution that has defined the country.
And the followers, they glom onto something that makes them feel good, compassion, love, and whatever, and have no clue what they're really doing.
They actually just think they're being fair and open-minded, and they're actually being hoodwinked into following policies and ideas that end up corrupting really good things.
And it's not just gay marriage or as an all-out assault.
Right now, the economy is under assault, and the whole concept of where prosperity comes from is under assault.
So I don't get a chance to talk to many Democrats.
And when I do, I love to pick their brains.
So, but you voted for Romney, so you don't really qualify as a subject.
I did, but as far as gay rights are concerned, I'm married with children, and I've never heard a compelling reason to deny rights to part of the population because of a sexual orientation or preference.
I've never heard a compelling reason.
So for me, it's kind of a non-issue.
Well, it's the most important issue to young people today.
And I'm talking about 18 to 30 in that demographic, even really folks and college kids, but even you get into the conservative bar scene, babes and guys in their 30s.
It is the issue that will define whether they remain conservative or not.
It really is amazing the way it's evolved.
And I guess it is a civil liberty issue to you.
It is.
But the thing that did it for me with Barack Obama was Benghazi.
And we're still not getting answers about that.
And it's tragic.
And we don't know what happened exactly.
They're not answering for it.
And for the first time last night, I saw a senator, at least somebody in Washington, standing there demanding an answer about something.
And I think it's going to be a huge catalyst for the Republican Party.
You know, I've had a lot of people say the same thing.
This may end up having legs more so than people realize.
Right.
You may be on to something here.
Why?
Again, you don't have to answer these, and there's no wrong answer.
I'm not trying to pick a fight.
I literally am trying to learn when I ask you.
Why were you born a Democrat?
Is this something you've always been?
Or was being a Democrat something that you studied and chose they happened to best represent your desires and beliefs over the Republicans?
Or did you not become a Republican because they're a bunch of racist, sexist bigots and so forth?
What was it that made you or kept you a Democrat?
I've never been anti-Republican.
Maybe it was tradition.
Kentucky was traditionally a very Democratic state.
My parents were Democrats, the whole family.
You know, perhaps that's why I registered as a Democrat.
You know that Ashley Judd is going to run for the Senate against Mitch McConnell.
What's your opinion of her?
She's an unknown politically.
We all know her as a honors program graduate from UK, Harvard NBA.
You know, she's very well educated.
She should be up on the issues.
But politically, we don't really know a thing about her other than she's a registered Democrat.
It won't.
I'm waiting to see what happens with that.
It won't be long before you find out.
I'm not going to be the one to tell you.
I'll let you figure it out on your own.
But all those things you said, they haven't worked.
Harvard NBA, you'll never know it is my point.
Anyway, look at Elizabeth, I appreciate the call.
I really do.
Thank you so much for taking the time and standing up to my penetrating questions.
I really appreciate it.
Rand Paul has declared victory.
He heard about the letter that Jay Carney read, and here is his reaction to it.
I'm quite happy with the answer, and I'm disappointed.
It took a month and a half and a root canal to get it, but we did get the answer.
And that's what I've been asking all along.
And it really is what the Senate should be about: advise and consent and find out what policies are.
I have a feeling, since this was so difficult, that I never would have gotten this with routine letters to the White House.
So through the advise and consent process, I've gotten an important answer.
This means that if you live in America, your Fifth Amendment isn't something that's optional.
If someone wants to arrest you, if you're not involved in combat in our country, what he's saying now publicly is no president.
Because I think the words bind everyone, not just this president, but it's the understanding of the presidency that they can't kill people without some kind of due process.
Folks, let me tell you, among other things, again, I just want to point out, Rand Paul broke through last night.
He didn't need the media.
He didn't, he didn't, he didn't have to, he didn't need a consultant.
He didn't need a PR campaign.
He just found a way to speak directly to the American people.
And it didn't cost him any money.
He was able to get right to it.
He didn't have to have an advertising campaign or anything of the sort.
No focus groups.
Spoke from the heart, right to the American people, got an answer from the White House, the answer that he wanted and support of the American people.
Well, what a great day it's been.
It was a fun and exciting day.
And who knows?
We may have seen the beginning of a momentum shift or energy shift.
Time hotel.
But something clearly important happened last night, and it will not be forgotten, provided an impetus maybe for future behavior on the part of people that need to stand in opposition to what's happening in our great country.
We'll see you tomorrow at Open Mind Friday.
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