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June 30, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:46
June 30, 2014, Monday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
And greetings to you once again, music lovers, thrill seekers, conversationalists all across the fruited plane.
It's Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network, and the Limboy Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
We are here, ladies and gentlemen, on the left coast this week from our hidden confines, somewhere out here near Hollywood, not in it, but dangerously close.
Great to have you with us as always.
A telephone number if you want to be on the program 800-282-2882, the email address, L Rushbo at EIBNet.com.
So we have a couple of Supreme Court rulings today, and depending on where you look, they are very, very narrow.
And in fact, in some cases, probably meaningless.
Except as far as they might provide political impetus for the left to re-engage in the supposed Republican war on women.
Now let's look at the Hobby Lobby case first off.
And I have to I need to issue a caveat here.
These rulings came out just this morning, and I have uh have spent as much time as I've had here getting into it and trying to figure them out.
But there's going to be a lot more to learn as time goes on today.
So I need to uh uh provide a uh uh sort of I need to reserve the right here to get something slightly incorrect.
If indeed that I doubt it, but um uh I may not have been able to absorb everything that's relevant in these two rulings prior to the program having begun.
But that's why there is tomorrow.
And in fact, why there is later today.
Now, at first blush, uh and I read one of the one of the preparatory pieces about the Hobby Lobby case and the um it was in the drive-by meeting, and of course, the point made about it was that even if the court ruled in favor of hobby lobby, it was going to be very, very narrow.
It was not going to be earth shattering, it was not going to be landmark, because it was only going to affect a few corporations, those corporations which are called closely held.
Now, what is what is a closely held corporation?
It basically means when the owners run it.
And the Hobby Lobby is owned and operated by a family, uh, not a gigantic public company with all kinds of stockholders and massive numbers of boards of directors.
And so the court in that case said those companies have a right not to have their religious beliefs violated by federal legislation as case Obamacare and the contraception mandate.
Obamacare requires that all employers provide contraception insurance coverage to their employees and the hobby lobby people.
We don't believe in that.
We don't believe in abortion, we don't believe in contraception, we don't believe the federal government can tell us that uh that they can make us violate our religious views.
And the Supreme Court agreed with them today.
Now, despite what many on the left are saying today, despite what you're probably gonna hear from a lot of people on the left, birth control is not what was banned by the Supreme Court.
That that's not what was on the docket, so to speak.
In the Hobby Lobby case, narrow though it may be, the Supreme Court, by five to four majority decision, defended liberty.
Uh and it should be noted that even after this decision, birth control remains widely available.
It is dirt cheap, no matter where you want to go get it.
The fact is that I'm I'm it if if you wanted to be entirely, well, not entirely, if you want to be somewhat negative about this, you could say that the most appalling thing about today's decision is that we had to even endure it.
That we had to even go through this.
We had to sit on the edge of our seats to Find out if people who own a for-profit company will also be allowed to exercise their religious views under our laws.
The fact that that was up for grabs is an indication of where we are nationwide and where we're heading.
I think it's just amazing.
Given that we're supposed to have freedom of religion enshrined in the Constitution, it should never have been an issue.
And the only reason it is is because we have a political party today conducting an all-out assault on the Constitution because they don't like it.
It's too limiting.
The Constitution limits government.
That's why Obama is saying, I don't care.
Well, he's really whining lately.
We've got some sound bites and some news.
He's really whining.
But if they won't act, I'm going to.
As though there is no Constitution.
But as you read the ruling from the Supreme Court, uh, in fact, let me just share with you one view that I have found by an appellate lawyer today.
This is a meaningless decision.
This is an appellate lawyer.
And by the way, one thing you should know that every time the conservatives win a Supreme Court decision, it's always narrow.
It's always meaningless.
It's really no big deal.
It's just, you know, we gotta throw them a bone now and then to keep them happy.
But there's really nothing to see here.
And an example of that comes from I found this at uh at Power Line, an appellate lawyer by the name of Mark Arnold, said this is a meaningless decision.
The less restrictive alternative that the majority settled on is a certification by Hobby Lobby that it opposes contraceptive coverage.
Okay, fine.
What happens next?
Well, now the insurance company is going to have to provide it for free.
It's still gonna be available to the employee free.
It's just that Hobby Lobby isn't gonna have to pay for it.
The insurance company will.
Which means that the premium charge to Hobby Lobby will include the cost of free contraception.
All smoke and mirrors.
So this guy's point is Hobby Lobby is still going to be paying for it, whether they think so or not.
And in that case, it's meaningless.
Because there still is the mandate.
Women are going at at their employer employment, must be provided free contraception.
If Hobby Lobby says we don't want to pay it because it violates our religious beliefs, then it goes to the next person line insurance company.
They're going to have to pay it.
And what will they do?
They'll bill back Hobby Lobby for the cost.
So, in fact, this guy's saying this meaning that ruling is literally meaningless.
It's literally smoke and mirrors, because when it's all said and done, Hobby Lobby is still going to be paying for contraception services for their female employees.
They may be right.
But it doesn't erase the Supreme Court decision.
Narrow though it might be, it doesn't erase the fact that the Supreme Court ruled that the government failed to show that the contraception mandate of the Affordable Care Act is the least restrictive means of advancing its interest in providing access to health insurance via birth control.
still ruled in favor of a closely held corporation to practice its religious views and And that is, I folks, I don't know that that's ever come from a Supreme Court decision.
I don't I think this may be first time that something like this has ever been officially sanctioned.
That the Supreme Court has actually ruled in favor of religious freedom for a corporation.
Now the left, of course, is going to try to say it's meaningless and narrow.
And of course, they've always got Obama.
In fact, the left, grab audio soundbite number four.
This is Gloria Borger.
Why?
Well, but you're going to have it in a second, right, after the computer reboots.
Right.
How long does that take?
Two hours?
Right in the middle of the reboot.
Well, but okay, is that still another five minutes, ten minutes?
Uh my computer sometimes.
If you get a Mac, you can reboot in 30 seconds.
Anyway, as soon as I call for the soundbite, the computer that holds them crashed, and now we're rebooting it.
But what it is is Gloria Borger simply saying she's on with Carol Costello on CNN, and they're just wringing their hands and they're lamenting the loss.
Oh, this is horrible.
But Gloria Borges, not to worry, not to worry, Obama will just decide to have the federal government pay for their contraceptives.
It'll be fine, Carol.
Don't sweat it.
Obama will fix it.
And probably some at the end of the day, uh female employees at Hobby Lobby will get free contraception.
This is the appellate lawyer's opinion that I just shared with you.
Here is audio soundbite number four, it's from CNN today, Gloria Borger and Carol Costello.
What they're probably gonna do is issue some kind of regulation.
What you're gonna see is the government sort of picking up uh where Hobby Lobby would would leave off.
This is a blow to the administration.
This is something, as I was talking about earlier, that's clearly going to become an issue in any presidential campaign, even in even in uh the midterm elections.
But in terms of actual impact for these particular women who work at these closely held companies, as you've been calling it, I do think that you'll end up seeing some kind of a regulation issued uh from the administration so they don't have a gap in their coverage.
Right.
And uh so that that's the thinking everywhere on the left.
It's either going to be Obama's gonna pay for it from his stash, like they think exists in Detroit, or uh the insurance company will be forced to pay for it, but they won't pay for it.
They'll just bill it back to uh to Hobby Lobby.
But no, the principle stands.
That's that's the point.
When all this is said and done, the Supreme Court still ruled that the federal government cannot make a closely held corporation violate its own personal religious beliefs.
And I'm gonna have to double check this, but I really do think that in that sense, we've not had a ruling this direct in that regard before, whatever the issue was.
Uh I think I saw that somewhere this morning in the mounds of showprep that I was uh going through.
And it it look, it means here that Obama cannot unilaterally dictate how religion is to be practiced via laws or regulations or executive orders.
It means that the First Amendment's not a casual plaything for uh cavalier statists, whether in the executive branch or whether in Congress.
There also was another ruling on the uh on the unions and whether or not parents and nannies taking care of their own loved ones at home can be forced to pay union dues, and that was rejected too.
And that was uh the headline's a sweeping loss for unions.
Horrible.
Oh, the Supreme Court just dealt a devastating blow to public union.
But this one really is kind of narrow.
But the principle still stands.
But what is really important, yet really small in this case is that even after the Hobby Lobby decision, women can still go to Target or Walmart and buy a month's worth of contraception for nine dollars.
What's kind of being overlooked here in all this, and we did look at it in great detail on the previous occasion on this program is that somehow we've gotten to the point where women should not have to pay for their own birth control.
Somebody else is gonna pay for it, no matter how much they want, no matter how often they want it, no matter for what reason, somebody else is going to pay for it.
That's that's the root of all this.
The employer should pay it, the employer doesn't have to pay it, the insurance company will pay it, but in in no way in 2014 America are women going to be pay for it, even though be paying for it, even though you can go to Target or Walmart and get a month's supply for nine bucks.
So the the ruling does not apply to, say, an Enron or an Exxon or uh or a General Motors.
That's not a closely held corporation.
But the Christian owners of Hobby Lobby cannot be forced to fund the contraception mandate.
Their liberty was defended here, no matter how narrow the left wants to say the ruling was, no matter what the practical application is when it's all over.
The First Amendment was enforced, or maybe reinforced today.
Got to take a brief time out, folks.
Sit tight.
We're back at you from Southern California right after this.
Don't go away.
Emberback, Al Rushbow executing his night, host duties flawlessly, zero mistakes as we meet and surpass all audience expectations every day.
Now, just a couple of more things.
There were really only four uh drugs, if you will, that Hobby Lobby objected to.
In fact, you could say that this case was about abortion in a sense because Hobby Lobby objected to providing coverage for abortive fashions, in other words, uh medications, if you will, that would abort a fetus.
Uh something that's that's already conceived as opposed to a preventative.
They didn't care about any of that.
It was contraception, actual contraception being aborted.
That's what they objected to.
That's what was upheld.
Now, another thing, too.
Uh, a closely held corporation.
You know, for all of the left uh lawyers, left-leaning lawyers out there saying, eh, it's a narrow decision.
It really doesn't mean it.
The bottom line is this definition of a closely held corporation may be up for grabs.
Umido said that the ruling applies only to corporations like the Hobby Lobby that are under the control of just a few people in which there is no essential difference between the business and its owners.
Well, does that include small business?
Does that include uh 50 employee shop, 100 employees shop where the owners run the thing and it's closely held?
A lot of people may be under the impression we're talking about big corporations which are closely held, which might count on two hands.
But it could, in fact, apply to a whole slew of corporations.
A corporation can have four people in it, for example, depending on how you structure it and file it.
And so closely held means that the owners operate it, and that there's no essential difference between the business and its owners.
Now, according to the Wall Street Journal, only 40 companies will get protection.
Are you listening to this, Snerdley?
Only about only about 40 companies will get protection under the Hobby Lobby ruling for the 44-profit employers who won injunctions against enforcement of the requirement.
Monday's ruling suggests they can keep their benefits offerings as is.
Many said they were facing bad options if the decision went the other way.
So it it looked at in one way, it can be seen as preposterously narrow.
Is the New York Times a closely held corporation?
I mean, it's publicly traded, but there's two kinds of stock.
There's uh Class A, and then there's Schultzberger family stock, and that's the only stock that matters.
Uh well, I don't know what's going to go back.
I I've I've it's too soon to say whether it may come back to court, but the people that are claiming it's a narrow ruling are going to the mat here in order to uh to make the point that that uh it is.
But you've even even with this, you know, look at all the waivers that Obama extended and granted before we even got to this point.
Prior to elections, when Obamacare was being implemented, he would offer waivers so as not to have the bill fully implemented prior to elections so as not to cause all the pain that is yet to come when it is fully implemented.
So it's scattershot.
It's it's it's all over the place.
And in that sense, uh, you might you might say the ruling practically applied is narrow.
I still think that the overall point, and that is upholding the freedom of religion clause in the First Amendment is a major thing.
It's sad that it even had to get to this point to have it asserted, but nevertheless it did.
Now the union case is next, another brief obscene profit time coming up, a profit break coming up, and we'll get to the uh now that really could be somewhat narrow in terms of who it applies to.
Hi, how are you?
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, L. Rushbow behind the golden EIB microphone.
The left coast uh all week.
Well, we're off Friday, Friday's Independence Day, and a traditional day off here, so Monday through Thursday here on the Left Coast, and we'll be back at the EIB Southern Command next week.
Now, the other Supreme Court case, Harris versus Quinn, the National Journal, the AP, any number of news agencies have headlined the story thus.
Supreme Court just dealt a devastating blow to public unions.
Now, even Samuel Alito, Justice Alito, is saying that this is an extremely narrow ruling.
This case concerned the constitutionality of agency fees charged by public sector unions to all workers in a unionized setting.
And this included non-union members.
I remember when this story first hit, and I remember talking about it.
Um the court decided five to four that a woman named Pam Harris, this is an Illinois case, Pam Harris and parents of disabled children in home health care who are not full public employees cannot be compelled to pay union bargaining fees or dues or any of that.
Uh big labor overreached, trying to get dues and union membership out of people who were doing work that is considered union work, but it was parents treating their own at home, their own disabled children in home health care.
The court ruled that personal assistance providing home care are much different from public employees.
And even from the SCOTUS block, Supreme Court of the United States blog, the court recognizes a category of partial public employees that cannot be required to contribute union bargaining fees.
Okay, well, let's go to the drive-by's, because they were devastated.
Although it is interesting, whenever there is a 5-4 decision, and both these rulings today are 5-4.
Whenever there's a 5-4 decision that conservatives win, the drive-by's always say it's going to divide the country in a great illustration, a great example of how partisan divide in this country continues to deeply rivet this nation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
When the left wins a 5-4 decision, it is unquestionably the law of the land, settled law, landmark, you name it, as in the case of Obamacare, was also five to four.
But with that five to four decision, uh that didn't divide the country.
That was sweeping and it was massive, and it was landmarked, but these two decisions, well, they're narrow.
They just gonna hasten and deepen the partisan divide.
It's so sad.
It was the Service Employees International Union that was trying to make Pam Harris pay them union dues.
But now here is Sam Baker and Emma Roller At the National Journal.
The Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision on Monday that mandatory public union dues violate members' First Amendment rights.
In the ruling, Justice Alito wrote that the precedent that had upheld the state of Illinois' right to require membership dues was shaky.
The issue at hand in Harris v.
Quinn involves Pamela Harris, a home caregiver in Illinois who takes care of her own disabled son.
Pam Harris is among home caregivers who've decided not to unionize through the Service Employees International Union, opting instead to bargain directly with the Medicaid recipients who decide how much money to allocate to their caregivers.
The SEIU even wanting to identicals are everywhere, these people seeking to even unionize parents, offering home care to their own children.
Now the case posed a challenge to the so-called fair play fees, which allow unions to collect dues from employees who are not in the union, but who still benefit from the bargains that unions strike with employers.
See?
So the drive-by says already it's unfair.
These people, they're being paid, they're being reimbursed because of what unions have secured for them, but yet they don't have to pay any dues.
It's totally unfair to the union.
By the case of public sector unions, though, the employer is the government.
For that reason, the challengers in this case argued that unions collective bargaining is inherently a political activity, essentially lobbying the government.
The challengers said allowing public sector unions to collect fair play fees is therefore requiring non-union employees to support political activities they don't necessarily agree with, which is violation of their Fourth Amendment rights.
But the National Journal hopefully breathlessly says there may be a silver lining for public unions.
The ruling is somewhat narrowly tailored to home caregivers known as PAs.
And this is what Alito wrote.
PAs are much different from public employees.
Unlike full-fledged public employees, PAs are almost entirely answerable to the customers, not to the state.
They don't enjoy most of the rights and benefits that inure to state employees, and they're not indemnified by the state for claims against them arising from actions taken during the course of their employment.
Even the scope of collective bargaining on their behalf is sharply limited.
So, in other words, despite the National Journal's headline, which is Supreme Court dealt a devastating blow to public unions.
This ruling is pretty narrow.
It's as narrow as it could be.
It only says that public sector unions cannot require dues from employees who are directly answerable to their customers rather than the state, like a home in-home caregiver, which was the case here.
So this this ruling is not going to affect the vast majority of state or federal employees.
We're still back, however, to the thing that we've all talked about on this program for years.
And here we have uh two cases, and everybody breathlessly awaits what nine people who wear black robes are going to say.
And whatever those nine people say is final fee, that's it.
And it's awfully precarious.
I uh somebody asked me today, sir, you expecting any Supreme Court vacancies this term rush.
Expect any of them to resign?
I said, I hope none of ours.
And if if one of the libs resigns, okay, Obama gets the name of replacement lib, no change in the balance.
If one of our side resigns, then that's a different ball game altogether.
Uh it's like the First Amendment, freedom of religion.
The fact that even gets the Supreme Court is appalling to me.
I understand it, both legally and intellectually.
It it's, but it's still appalling that it comes down to this.
Uh That we have a president who looks at the Constitution and bulldozes it.
Sometimes he tries to finesse his way around it.
Other times just finesses it.
And so most every day is spent on defense.
You get up every day and you see next what aspect, what tradition, what institution of our great country is under assault now.
And so all the energy is spent on defending things that ought not need a defense because the Constitution is what it is, but the fact is there are people that don't like it.
The fact is people think the Constitution is far too limiting on them.
And those are people who think the government's not big enough.
And the government doesn't have enough power.
And they resent deeply the fact that the Constitution limits only government and does not limit the people.
They want to replace it.
Or amend it, change it, however, so that the Constitution finally spells out what government can do, not what government can't do.
It really, really bugs them.
And so they mount these all out of slow.
This is this is why pushback is so important.
And it's why when there isn't any pushback, I'm talking about political pushback, when there's no political leadership trying to stand up and defend all these traditions and institutions that are under assault.
It's why you end up with a Tea Party, which really isn't a party.
And oh, by the way, speaking of the Tea Party, I didn't even intend to get to this today.
But I am starting to note there's a there's an editorial today in the Washington Times.
Now everybody assumes the Washington Times uh, for better or for worse, is at least in terms of media conservative.
There's a huge editora, a signed editorial, an op-ed, I guess, that is devoted to the premise that the Tea Party is dead, and that's good.
It's about freaking time.
And the Tea Party died in the Thad Cochrane election.
That was it.
That proves the Tea Party doesn't exist, it never did exist.
The Tea Party may have been good when it started, but then too many people tried to commandeer it for their own personal promotional reasons.
Sarah Palin is cited.
A couple of other people are cited.
And so the Tea Party, which was a grassroots organization, it really wasn't even a party, it was just a massive collection of individuals who's not been corrupted, and they've entered the political fray, and they couldn't even beat Thad Cochran.
This piece does not even talk about the shenanigans that took place with the Republicans getting out the vote of Democrats in a reverse operation chaos.
But the point is that we get up every day, we have to defend what we think are never-ending assaults on the traditions and institutions which have defined this country's greatness.
I don't care if 80% of the country doesn't know what they are.
You know, I don't I don't care if if there's a lot of ignorance.
I don't, I don't really care.
You know, I've been hearing a lot, you know, Rush, we the people are tired of political fight.
They don't want it anymore.
You know, it's a new age now.
Look at the kids.
The kids with them, it's just tolerance.
That's all, you know, everybody's fine, everybody's okay in this stuff, you know, you're never gonna win it.
And if if it doesn't work, it's gonna fix itself.
Obamacare will fix itself.
We don't, we don't need constant bickering, constant fighting.
He says, look at look around.
You know, look take any town you want to go to, right?
80% of people who live there don't care.
They don't want to be involved, they don't like the fight, they just want to live their lives to be left alone.
Well, that's fine.
But the fact that 80 percent may not care or might not have even been educated to know why they should care doesn't mean that you just cave and give up.
I mean, every day is spent trying to educate, trying to inform, trying to influence, no question, and and trying to stop.
And we haven't even gotten around to advancing an agenda.
We're just we're just Every day, and we have to get to the Supreme Court on something that's already in the Constitution.
And it does wear people out.
I I fully understand that.
But why should if if if 80% or if the current generation, the millennials, if they don't care, why should that be gospel?
If they if they don't like the fight rush, they just don't want to, they don't want to mess with it anymore.
They don't this this left-right paradigm is not exist anymore for people.
You know, it's a losing battle.
People just not.
Um I wonder how many people at the time of the nation's founding had that kind of an attitude.
I don't want to mess with this.
I don't want to go to war with you.
I'm happy here as it is the British aren't going to do anything to us, unless we provoke them.
We don't have to do anything about it.
It's it's just, it's, it's it's just a constant battle, and it's always going to be, always has been the history of the country is it's always a minority of really committed people who are fighting tyranny.
We're fighting the natural inclination of government to grow and amass and wield power.
John O'Sullivan.
Oops, I just saw the clock.
I gotta take a quick time out here, folks, but I will not lose my train of thought.
On the cutting edge of societal evolution.
Rush Limbaugh, the limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Throughout American history, it has been at the beginning a minority who fought for, in this case, independence.
If you remember polls back in the days of the founding, probably would have found a majority opposed to it, didn't want the hassle, would put up with it.
But what leadership is uh is is all about.
Uh there is it's it's undeniable.
Some people just don't want to face it, it's too hard.
It's it it requires commitment and involvement.
Uh it requires judgments, and a lot of people are not comfortable making judgments.
They don't want to be judged, and uh they're they're not comfortable making judgments.
And they're certainly depending on places such as where they live or where they work, they do not want to be thought of as political.
I think that's one of the things that is happening in our culture right now is there's a uh a whole negative to Papa for whatever reason, there's any number of them.
Uh but if you say that your your political orientation or view is or energy as why you favor or oppose something, it's a lot of people are just going to reject it.
But if you say it's cultural that you care about people, then they'll listen to you and think that you care.
It's uh it's a fascinating thing.
All the this evolution is constant in the country's taking place, it transforms and reforms and and uh but it requires people that stay focused.
It requires people that stay committed in order to provide the leadership and eventually get the 80 percent that don't care at some point to pay attention at least a little.
Because it is they for whom everything is being fought.
Now, before we go quickly to the next break, I got uh Jeffrey Tubin on CNN today who read the dissent by Ruth Buzzy Ginsburg and is convinced based on her ruling, she really worried this isn't narrow at all.
She thinks this is really broad and sweeping and wide ranging.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dissenting opinion is devoted to the proposition that it's not narrow, that the idea that a privately held company can exercise religious beliefs in deciding which benefits and which customers to deal with is potentially a very broad idea.
In fact, you know, she points out that there are religious owners of companies who believe in the separation of the races.
Should their religious beliefs be honored?
There are people of conviction and faith who believe that homosexuality is evil and immoral and don't want to engage in business with gay people.
They could take advantage of these rulings.
Yeah, so you see when you get down to the bare bones of the left is terribly worried about this and the implications.
And so the effort to Cast it as narrow and meaningless is uh is public relations and uh and buzz.
But if you get one of the leading liberal lights on the court worried about it, and particularly because, my God, a company can exercise its religious beliefs.
Oh my god, oh my god!
You know, religious beliefs are some of the most attacked beliefs in our culture today.
Gotta go, be back.
Don't go anywhere, folks.
Alexis de Tookville, when he was touring America in the 1830s, said that all Americans wanted to talk about was politics.
They were consumed with it.
What's abnormal is more and more people tuning out of it.
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