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Dec. 4, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:40
December 4, 2014, Thursday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Hi, folks, and welcome.
Great to have you here, Rush Limbaugh behind the golden EIB microphone.
And I've been behind this microphone a long time, my friends.
And that means what it means.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program is 800-282-2882 in the email address.com.
And it just keeps happening.
We go from the Michael Brown case to the Eric Garner case in New York.
And once again, it becomes necessary to sort through all of the disinformation that's out there and try to make sense of it.
And again, and at the end of the process here, once again we have a grand jury decision.
A grand jury decision which in many sectors of the culture and society is unacceptable.
And is uh thought to have been rigged and is thought to have been unfair.
And so the president of the United States has said that we are not going to let up.
He and Eric Holder are not going to let up.
I thought, by the way, it was very, very telling, quite fitting, in fact, that Obama made his remarks at a White House tribal nations conference.
Because you know Obama is trying his best to eliminate all of the warring and discord going on between all the tribes, right?
So what do we what do we know about this?
And what remains confusing?
And there's something about this.
I don't this is just me.
Well, maybe it isn't just me.
Snerdley was mentioning this to me earlier today, so maybe a lot of people have.
You realize what this was about.
How many times a day do you think the New York PV walks by a shop or a property of some kind or is driving by, sees somebody blowing a joint and just keeps going?
How often do you think that happens?
It probably happens so many times a day you can't count it.
Somebody blowing a weed don't stop, maybe even wave at them, say, hey, dude, what you see them selling, it's a different thing.
But you see somebody blowing a weed, and even if the selling just a single joint, the cops don't stop for this anymore.
And yet this guy ends up dead because the city of New York is hellbent on driving out the black market cigarette industry from Manhattan.
Why is there a black market cigarette industry?
Do you know what a pack of cigarettes costs in New York City today?
I thought it was 10 bucks.
I mentioned that to Snerdley.
Snurley said, no, it's 11.
Thir wait is wait a second.
13?
Somebody used to be $13.
Okay, $13 a pack.
When I just back in the late 60s and 70s, a carton of cigarettes in Missouri was barely five bucks.
Now that $13 a pack in New York City.
What percentage of that price is taxes?
You know that cigarettes and tobacco are not that expensive.
You know that transportation's not that expensive.
Stocking and all of the bring it to market aspects of that price are minimal.
The vast majority of the price, $13 a pack, is taxes.
Now, as a side note, and I've made a big deal about this over the years.
Smokers in our culture are hated and despised.
Smokers people look down on them, don't want anything to do with them.
Smokers, people bring their nose in and get out of here.
Smokers are really the modern incarnation of evil.
And yet smokers, because of all the taxes they are paying, are funding most of the children's health care programs the federal government has.
You may not be aware of that, but the primary funding source for children's health care programs Now, this was prior to Obamacare.
I don't know what kind of changes have taken place since Obamacare, but prior to Obamacare, the primary funding source for children's federal children's health care programs was the taxes on cigarettes.
And it always amazed me.
The federal government is deriving all of this revenue without producing a thing.
The federal government's just sticking their hands in everybody's pocket.
And at the same time they're collecting all this revenue, they're out there demonizing these.
I've always thought, and I've I've I've said this not intending it to be flippant.
I've tried to make a point with this.
Smokers, in my mind, in some cases deserve a medal.
Because look at you have a product, and everybody, from government officials on down to the lowest life civilian, thinks that smokers are reprobates and that nobody ought to be able to smoke, and everybody thinks that it's got to be, but nobody bans it.
Everybody stops short at banning the product.
We hear what a killer product it is, we hear what it does to insurance rates, we hear what it does to life expectancy.
I mean, it's horrible stuff and has been banned usage-wise.
You can't use the stuff.
You can buy it, they'll sell it to you, they'll tax the heck out of it, but you can't use it.
It's gotten to the point now in certain parts of the country, if you want to smoke in your home, and some busybody half a block down the street can smell it, they're gonna call the cops on you, and you're gonna get hit up for polluting the neighborhood and causing secondhand smoke and promoting the cause and creation and uh coming down of cancer.
It's it's it's absurd.
All the while, the tax revenue from this product is used to fund children's health care programs and a number of other things.
It's not just children's health.
The federal government, state governments will not do without that tax revenue no matter what.
And I've always thought it was one of the most contradictory setups that we have, because everything said publicly about the product is intended to besmirch it, impugn it, and do the same thing to the people that use it.
And yet here's the government scoring, I mean, you want to talk about obscene profits.
The government doesn't do a damn thing but stick its hand in.
The government does, and it taxes tobacco at every stage.
It taxes tobacco when the farmers thinking about planting it.
Okay, so now the price of a pack of cigarettes in New York City is $13.
Almost $13.
I'm I'm here, I've got that data from a smoker.
Okay.
So this has created understandably so, and nothing's not new, this has created a black market.
There are black market cigarette smugglers.
And they endeavor to get cigarettes from the states where they are manufactured.
North Dakota, I mean North Carolina being a prominent one, South Carolina as well.
And they smuggled them in to high-priced cities and states like New York.
And then they openly sell them, and the word spreads that if you know this guy or that guy, you can go out and buy cigarettes at much, much less than the retail price.
This guy, now stop and think of this.
This guy, Eric Garner, as his for his job, the way he created his living, the way he made his living, sold Lucy's single individual cigarettes.
And if you're poor, that's all you can afford.
One cigarette at a time, and he's out there selling Lucy's.
Now, if you want to buy a pack, I'm sure he'd sell you the whole pack, but he's out there selling Lucy's, meaning loose individual cigarettes.
This is this is beyond my ability to comprehend.
And the sole reason for it, the sole reason why a guy like Eric Garner even has a job selling Lucy's is that the city of New York is hellbent on collecting its precious taxes from $13 a pack.
And so here come all these black market guys trying to take advantage of the fact that people will pay much less than that if they're given a chance.
This is what the left liberals never understand about their idiotic tax policies.
They do not understand the dynamics attached to it.
This is how the liberal thinks.
Group of people smokers.
We hate them.
They're yuck.
They're filthy, they dirty, they spread disease.
Yuck, but we need their money.
Because we're funding children's health care programs.
So we'll gladly get them addicted to the product, and we won't let them smoke them anywhere legally.
We're going to be pursuing these people every which way we can, but by God, we're going to make them pay for it.
Well, you can't afford $13 a pack if you are addicted to cigarettes, and nicotine is the most addictive drug out there.
There is no more addictive drug than Nina.
You might say, well, Rush, they're juicing crack and they're juicing crystal meth and all that.
Maybe.
Maybe, but have you ever seen anybody have a pleasant first experience with tobacco?
I'm talking about inhaling your first puff of a cigarette.
You ever seen somebody do that?
Some of them make the mad dash to the toilet bowl.
And within minutes, they light the second one.
It's understandable becoming addicted to a drug that creates euphoria or a big high, but tobacco doesn't do that.
The psychological psychosomatic would have affected tobacco.
It's hardly even noticeable, but yet it is the most addictive drug that's known.
And of course, it spiked as well at various levels of manufacture.
So the state of New York's got this group of people called smokers.
And they know they're addicted.
And despite all the efforts to make them quit, they know they can't.
So they see just a pile of money when they see these people.
And they think because they're addicted, they can't not buy the product.
So they just keep raising taxes and raising taxes, and they expect people just to come up with the money from somewhere and pay it.
They do not appreciate the dynamics of it, that if there is a black market available, it's going to grow and people are going to find it because nobody in their right mind is going to pay $13 a pack for cigarettes unless they have a net worth of at least 100 million bucks.
Who in their right mind is going to do that?
Ergo, gives birth to guys like Eric Garner, who can try to make a living selling loosies.
This is the most incredible thing to me.
Okay.
So the city of New York, all out of shape, that it's that it's $13 per pack taxes are not being collected due to the black market for cigarettes that sprung up due to all of these taxes.
So what do they then do?
They mandate.
They mandate.
They call the police commissioner and they tell him you get your your members of the force locked and loaded on this.
I want people arrested.
I want examples made.
I want to get these black market cigarettes off the street.
I want to get them out of town, and anybody selling them I want dealt with.
And so the cops hit the streets with their marching orders, and on the way to catching the guy selling Lucy's, they have to probably pass by some people, you know, who knows doing what with whatever it is, crack or d or marijuana or whatever, because they are hellbent on getting these black market guys out.
Because that is our precious tax revenue.
So Eric Garner, with everything else that's involved here, or whatever else happened here, we have a guy who died over a tax collection issue, but nobody will say that out loud.
We have a poor guy who died because of a tax collection issue.
And by the way, over here is Al Sharpton, who somehow still owes the feds over four million dollars in back taxes, and nobody's making a mad dash to collect from him.
But this poor guy trying to eke out a living in Manhattan, well, he is Staten Island, selling Lucy's single cigarettes.
Did you see the number of cops that descended on this guy?
What, five or six cops?
On a guy selling Lucy's?
On a guy selling cigarettes.
What kind of orders must these cops be under?
I guarantee you, I don't care what the human nature sees somebody smoking a cigarette, come on, you keep driving, you keep walking.
It isn't a big deal.
You have to be told you have to be under some kind of really concentrated concerted order in order to focus so much energy and so much attention on some poor guy selling individual cigarettes.
Now, Garner left his job as a see what he's he was, if you can believe that he was a horticulturalist for New York City.
He left that job because of his asthma.
So I guarantee you the guy's on disability of some kind.
A factor.
So he was doing something so that he could collect money off the books so as not to damage whatever benefit plan or series of benefit plans that he was that he was on.
New York State, back to the taxes here.
New York State imposes a tax of $4.35 a pack.
That's the highest of any state, and that's on top of the local New York City tax of a buck 60, which is also the highest of any city.
And the mayor, de Blasio, has just ordered the police to crack down on illegal cigarettes a few weeks before the Garner incident.
that.
And de Blasio's running around, what happened?
Gee, man, this is outrageous.
Look at all the success force.
Well, yeah, well, that's what you tax collectors.
Somebody had to mandate.
I'm not suggesting somebody told a cop to go out and kill these people, but I'm this is just none of this.
It is so out of proportion.
It is so out of proportion.
And I'm telling you, everywhere you look where some of this stuff is happening, inexplicable stuff.
Who's running the show?
It turns out wherever you turn, liberals are running the show.
I gotta take a break here because of the constraints of time.
We'll be back and continue after this.
Don't go away.
Greetings, my friends, and welcome back.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network and the Limboy Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
You know, this this New York city and state and tobacco and taxes.
This is a this is a bigger factor in this than anybody really wants to stop and consider.
You remember the big tobacco settlement from years ago in which lawyers ended up earning 200 million dollar fees.
Remember, and the states collected massive amounts of money in this massive suit because the tobacco CEOs had gone before Congress and lied about testing and dangers and all that.
The states, including New York, after these big settlements went out and bonded.
By that I mean they borrowed and spent budget-wise a big chunk of the revenue that they were due.
And that they were continued because the settlement gave the states an ongoing piece of future cigarette sales.
So New York was one of many states that went out and borrowed and spent based on what they expected to be an income stream.
As the simplest way to explain this.
And so if after having doing that, the tobacco sales did not continue at the same high levels into the next decade, which would be required for the tobacco companies to meet their obligations under the settlement, because they're going out, they borrowed and spent based on what they thought the income stream was going to be from the settlement.
So guess what?
Tobacco sales didn't keep up with what these guys failed to calculate the dynamics of all these tax increases.
So the states had to come up with debt service to repay the bonds from other revenue, i.e.
new taxes or spending cuts, because they had borrowed and spent far more than they actually ended up getting.
And that's why taxes are now, well, what they are, the price of 13 bucks a pack.
It's just it's just obscene here that something like this happens because governments can't get enough money.
Now I don't want anybody to misunderstand me here.
There's a lot of uh nuance here and a lot of ancillary points, excuse me, that I'm focusing on.
I'm not I'm not saying that that Eric Garner was killed for selling cigarettes.
He didn't die because he was selling cigarettes, untaxed or otherwise.
He died because he resisted arrest.
And the cops, I still can't believe the number of them.
And you know something else that amazed me now.
This is an observation, just an observation.
I know Eric Garner's a big guy, but what amazed me was in comparison how the cops look small compared to this guy.
I know he's a big guy, but it took a lot of cops to subdue this guy, apparently.
This the whole thing here is just I don't know.
Weird.
Grand jury decision is what it is.
And, you know, I've got legal beagle friends of mine, some of them say that they have no problem with it, others are concerned with it.
There's a there's a lot of confusion about this.
There's an earlier part of the audio, where he makes clear, it is made clear that he will not be arrested.
So there was no reason for him to continue to resist as he was.
He was he was he's being told he wasn't going to be arrested.
So yet he continued, Garner continued to resist.
So what do you do?
Pepper spray, taser.
I uh I don't know, given officer training.
I don't know what you do at that point.
They're telling him he's not going to be arrested, but he continues to fight them and resist and all this, and then they get descended on by an increasing number of cops.
The cops can't walk away.
Remember, the cops had been summoned by a minority-owned business complaining this guy was hurting his business.
He had a minority-owned business owner call a cop, say, hey, look, I got a guy selling illegal black market cigarettes out in front of my store.
You got to come do something about it.
Cops showed up.
Because it's a focal point for the city and its and its tax collection efforts.
And that was it was more than one local business.
A bunch of them were saying that the Garner and people like him were hurting their businesses with his cheap cigarettes, and he was driving business away.
Now, this man, Garner had been arrested at least 31 times before.
He was on parole from a previous charge of selling cigarettes.
Uh should have known the drill, but he kept fighting back.
He told the cops this ends now.
Apparently he'd been fed up what he thought was police harassment.
And he had had enough of it, and he said, okay, this ends now.
I remember what Chuck Barkley said.
Charles Barclay said, when the cops are trying to arrest you and you fight back, things go wrong.
Especially if you happen to be obese and have asthma and heart disease and diabetes.
Now the media has skipped over some details about Garner's arrest.
The police were sent to arrest Garner because local minority-owned businesses were complaining he was driving business away, And that he was competing with businesses that sold cigarettes by selling illegal untaxed cigarettes one at a time, Lucy's.
So the cops were called.
A second fact that the media is conveniently ignoring is it was a black precinct chief who ordered the police to arrest Garter.
And a third fact is the arresting police team was under the supervision, supervision of a black female police sergeant.
Now I don't know why the news media would leave all that information out, but they did.
It totally amazes me why none of that information ended up in the media.
Now a lot of people are saying, see, Rush, see, no matter what you do, no matter what happens, no matter what you tell us, Rush, this is a perfect example of out-of-control cops.
Well, is it?
From the New York Post today, there were 228,000 misdemeanor arrests in New York City in 2013.
That's the last year for which there are audited figures.
Every one of those 228,000 misdemeanor arrests had at least the potential to turn into an Eric Garner-like case.
Not one of them did.
228,000 misdemeanor arrests in New York City last year, and not one of them ended up anywhere near as what happened in the Eric Garner.
So the idea the cops are out of control is a bit of a stretch as well.
And then there's this little tidbit.
Do you know that if you go to the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, you can find a section on confiscated cigarettes.
And you know what happened?
New York State resells them.
We have listed below current opportunities to buy cigarettes that were confiscated by the New York State Tax Department.
And then it says, who may bid bidders must have a current New York State stamping agent license.
And then they give their authority to sell, as kind of being under tax law section 1846, they say we're allowed to sell cigarettes confiscated in accordance with judicial law.
And then it goes on to tell you as a potential buyer how you might be qualified and how you might not be qualified in order to bid on confiscated cigarettes.
So there's no question here that every effort is made to earn as much money off this product as possible.
At the same time, the same people who are doing everything they can to get every penny of this product are condemning its use, are bludgeoning and impugning its users, and denying them every day more and more places where they can legally use the product.
In the process, they have been the architects of the black market.
The people in charge of all this have themselves set the stage for black market circumstances to prosper and thrive.
And hello, Eric Garner selling Lucy's.
I still can't get over individual, illegal cigarettes.
It's just stunning.
And of course, now we got I haven't even gotten to the details of whether it was a chokehold or not.
And it's very confusing.
The New York police department, the NYPD, has a policy against the usage of chokeholds.
However, they're not illegal in the state.
The state of New York permits them.
So while it's New York police policy that chokeholds are not to be used, there is no violation of law in doing so.
And then there are stories about how there are different kinds of chokeholds, and that the cop in this case Did not use a chokehold that results in fatality, at least not by design.
That this is a chokehold taught in training by the New York PD that incapacitates but does not kill.
Now none of this matters a whit to the race.
Did you see Chuck Wrangell yesterday?
You're Charlie Wrangle.
Let's go to the audio soundbites real quick.
And I thought what I want you to do first, Mike, let's see.
Go back and grab audio soundbite number four.
I just want to, I just want to prove this again.
I can tell you what I said, but I want you to hear me say it.
This is February 22nd of 2008.
We are ten months here before the presidential election, ten months before Obama has won.
We're in fact, we're only one month away from Operation Chaos here.
At the time this audio soundbite was created by me.
And you remember Operation Chaos as our effort to save Hillary's candidacy in 2000.
Boy, she may need it again.
Did you see?
Holy smokes, did you now there's a story?
Hillary Clinton has lost the new car smell.
Hillary doesn't have the new car smell, which Obama says any candidate needs.
Who is running around sniffing Hillary to know that she doesn't have a new car smell?
And if she doesn't have a new car smell, what does she smell like?
And then she goes to Georgetown.
I'm telling you, folks, it is the biggest myth in the world that Hillary Clinton is a lock and a shoe-in to be elected president.
Nobody bought her book.
They had to arrange, after it had already been a disaster, they had to arrange all these book signings and probably arrange and pay, maybe for people to show up and act like paying customers.
She does not connect with people.
So the publisher gives her this astronomical advance, thinking it, oh, buying and drinking the Kool-Aid, Hillary Clinton, most popular Democrat just put the book out there and gazillions are going to sell.
And none did.
And she goes to speak at Georgetown yesterday, and the place is over half empty.
And it's not the first time that has happened.
So she may need help from this program again, depending on what other circumstances evolve in that campaign.
But I just want to take you back.
February 22nd of 2008.
This is me, your beloved host.
If Obama gets elected president, wouldn't it be good to just get this done, Russia?
We can end the civil rights squabbles that we're having.
It wouldn't do that.
Folks, it wouldn't do that.
It might even exacerbate them.
And you remember, and you may have agreed with me at the time, but you certainly remember me building on that and pointing out many times, not only the election of Obama not solve, ameliorate or improve race relations, but by definition his election to make them worse.
And I spelled out why.
The reason the election of Obama will make race relations work is presidents get criticized.
Everybody criticizes presidents now and then.
It's part and parcel of political process.
The president of the United States is a policy machine, and there are going to be people who disagree with it.
But with Obama, every syllable of criticism.
I warned everybody was going to be chalked up to racism.
None of the criticism of Obama would be legitimate, and so none would be permitted.
And this led to the Republican Party being scared of its own shadow, and they stopped criticizing, and it Republican Party voters felt leaderless.
And it just kept descending from there as there was no opposition to the Obama agenda, which was nothing less than the full transformation of this country.
Because any opposition, any spoken opposition, was immediately charged with racism and bigotry.
And if you're in politics, that's the last thing you want said about you, because if it sticks, you're done.
Well, guess who came forward and admitted this yesterday?
Threw up his hands figuratively speaking in a gesture of pure utter futility.
None other than Congressman Charlie Wrangell from Harlem.
Until we face up for what it is.
Until we recognize that not having a black president has resolved the problem at all.
Minorities being elected to local, State and federal offices is not a resolution of the problem.
So I do hope that the Department of Justice gives Americans an opportunity to take this cancer and cut it out once and for all.
I said race relations are getting worse, and Charlie Wrangle now agrees.
Having a black president hadn't resolved the problem at all.
And having elected black officials as mayors and where it hasn't, it hasn't solved the problem at all.
So now he wants the long arm of the Justice Department to go in and punish people inside outside the law.
That's secondary point, but you can imagine what their hopes were.
Oh man, look at the problems this is gonna solve.
Oh man, they were salivating for it, too.
It's just not only not solved a problem, it's made it worse.
Got to take a break here, my friends.
I see the clock a little long.
Sit tight.
We will be back and continue after this.
You don't want to weigh in, and by the way, Michael Sam, TMZ has the story.
TMZ's got a couple of TMZ has misquoted me.
Imagine that.
TMZ has listed me a bunch of people criticizing Charles Barkley yesterday.
How in the world yeah, how in the world do you get there?
How in the world does that happen?
Some guy, grab audio sound by number one.
This is uh TMZ Hollywood Sports, the host Evan Rosenblum, reporting about Barclay and his comments on the rioters in Ferguson.
He's saying that the real black people are not the looters, and the people out in Ferguson now were smashing windows.
Uh he's basically saying the scumbags are not real black people.
It's not just the internet, though.
It's also guys like Rush Limbaugh, who have also been very critical of Charles Barclay.
What in the world is this man talking about?
Rush Limbaugh, critical of Char.
I am the guy.
It was Barkley who appeared on a radio in Philadelphia last Tuesday.
And from last Tuesday till this past Monday, Tuesday the 24th, Tuesday before Thanksgiving.
Folks, a week went by after Barclay appeared on the radio, and nobody even knew about it.
The news did not escape Philadelphia.
And on Monday, my first day back after Thanksgiving holiday, I had the story say, Whoa, look at this.
And I introduced by saying, Who is the one man in America who can say anything he wants about race with no blowback?
And my staff said, hmm, who is it?
Little 30-second top quiz of Charles Barkley.
And I then read his qu n the I did I criticizing Barclay?
How do you even get there?
Anyway, and TMZ again is running a story.
Michael Sam.
I'm not in the NFL because I'm gay.
There's a picture of him.
It looks like a baggage claim here at a bus station at airport.
Michael Sam believes he's not on an NFL roster because of the fact that he's openly gay, telling TMZ sports he strongly believes he's got the talent to play in the it was an LAX.
Yep, when he was asked if he thinks NFL teams are shying away from him because of his sexual orientation.
Yep, yep, I'm not in a league because I am gay.
Michael Sam, TMZ.
Here's John in Old Bridge, New Jersey.
John, I'm glad you called.
Great to have you on the EIB network, hi.
Thank you, Russ.
Long time listener.
Um I'm a retired police officer with 30 years experience, and I just wanted to comment on the arrest of the Gardner individual.
Um, never in any police academy that I ever attended or any after academy training, you're never taught how to make a misdemeanor arrest or a felony arrest with someone standing in front of you.
You have to take that person's liberty, you have to do it quickly.
You do not give that person a chance to enrage or or uh escalate the situation.
And you have to use escalation of force.
When they told that man you're under arrest and he raised his hands and pushed away, and then he pushed away a second time.
Your partners are there, they have to take him down.
You can do it with a baton, which would look ugly.
You could do it with mace, you could look with a taser, all of which cause could have caused him a heart attack.
Uh unfortunately they did it the easiest way.
They put him in a in in a uh headlock.
They took him to the ground gently.
He was laying on the ground, they were holding him down.
No one kicked him, no one punched him.
Yeah, but he said he was trying to shout that he couldn't breathe.
He had positional asphyxiation, Russ, and that's a civil matter.
That's not a criminal matter.
If you put a guy down legally onto the ground, you affected an uh an arrest.
Okay, so I'm I'm I'm real short on time.
Are you defending the cops?
Is that is that the point of your call?
I'm defending the arrest.
Defending your rest.
I'm defending the way the arrest was made.
All right, okay.
I gotta run.
I gotta get 30 years' experience.
He's a cop from New Jersey.
We'll be back.
Don't go away for a major, major, major environmental disaster in Pennsylvania today.
Major, a tractor trailer overturned that was carrying 19,000 copies of the New York Times.
It's a drastic environmental disaster.
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