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Feb. 12, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:35
February 12, 2015, Thursday, Hour #2
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Greetings, my friends, and welcome back.
You are tuned to the most listened-to radio talk show in America, the most eagerly anticipated appointment radio program in America.
Hosted by me, your all-round good guy, radio racing tour, Rush Limbaugh, here at the Limbaugh Institute.
Telephone number, you want to be on the program is 800-282-2882.
The email address, lrushbo at EIBnet.com.
I just reminded myself of something.
Last week, sometime, didn't Obama and Susan Rice come out with a new name for our foreign policy called strategic patience.
Okay, so that's what we had left.
Strategic patience.
That means we're just going to sit on the ball for the last two years on this foreign policy stuff.
And we're going to try to make people think we're doing a whole lot of it.
We're going to go to four corners defense.
We're not going to do anything, but we're going to make it look like we're kicking butt.
Because Obama's going to go out there and talk about how we're going to kick butt.
Except, let's say that you are among the deployed, but we're not going to have any ground troops.
But you're in the mission.
You get picked.
You wear the uniform.
You get picked to go after these folks that commit random crime.
And then you hear your commander-in-chief talk about the mission within the confines of strategic patience.
The mission as degrading and hopefully destroying ISIS.
It's what he said.
He said, hopefully, destroy ISIS.
What is this hopefully?
The mission is to, and hopefully, hopefully we'll be peppered with good luck and good fortune, and hopefully we will defeat.
I don't know.
It's crying shame, all of this is.
Anyway, President Obama lashed out against CEOs and business leaders who have cut hours at their places of business in response to the mandates of Obamacare, which forced them to provide insurance for employees who work more than 30 hours a week.
Now, I know that that aspect of Obamacare is not news to you because you are regular listeners here.
But for those of you who may be new and may have come to us from what we call the low information crowd, the aspect of Obamacare that this story is about is this.
Obamacare, national health care, requires businesses to provide health insurance for employees who work more than 30 hours a week.
So what's happening is that employers, because they can't afford this, they simply, I mean, health insurance is getting more expensive for everybody, including bulk buyers, including people that buy a lot of policies for a lot of people, a big group.
Health insurance costs are skyrocketing because Obamacare doesn't do one thing to lower their cost because there's nothing in Obamacare that reestablishes an economic relationship between the consumer and the provider.
And until that happens, there's never going to be any cost control in healthcare.
In virtually everything else you buy, be it a car, be it a house, renting an apartment, television set, hotel rooms, those prices, those commodities, those units are priced at various price points so that anybody can afford one.
You may not be able to afford a $100,000 car, but you might be able to afford a $40,000 car.
The market takes care of providing you both your needs and wants, usually at a price point that's within your ability to afford it.
Hotel rooms, you can stay at a five-star Ritz or you can stay at the local 12-room motel, not the end of town.
Whatever you want to spend, whatever you can afford to spend, there's a hotel room priced for you.
But in healthcare, no such thing exists.
The patient's ability to pay is not a factor whatsoever in the cost of medical care.
And as long as that remains true, there is no way the costs of health care are going to come down.
If you can't afford it and you can still have it, how does that work economically?
If you can't afford the medical care that you're at present getting, but yet you're getting it, means somebody else is paying for it.
You may not know who.
You may not know the pathway, but you do know it's being paid for.
It's just not being paid for by you because you probably can't afford it.
And the reason that you can't afford it is precisely because you don't have to pay for it.
If everybody, if the providers of healthcare's only source of revenue was what people could afford, what do you think would happen to prices?
They'd come down.
It's called supply, demand, and market forces.
And for the most part, markets work.
But going back to the, well, you could even say 50s, but let's peg it to the 60s and the advent of Medicare and Medicaid.
Maybe even World War II with employee provided health care.
Back then they needed employees and it was a benefit, it was a perk.
Well, that established that somebody else is going to pay for it for you.
Except that you were, you just didn't know it.
If you have health care as a benefit at work, and whether you pay nothing or whether you have to pay part of a copay, or you have to pay a deductible or whatever, let's say that you earn $80,000 a year and you've got dental and health care and whatever other benefits, sick pay, time to visit the vet day, whatever, it probably is costing the employer, including Social Security, probably costing the employer.
I'll just make up a number.
It's going to be close to $100,000 to pay you $80,000.
You are getting the $100,000.
You just don't see $20,000 of it.
It's in the form of your healthcare benefit or whatever other benefit that you have.
But it's still, that's the cost of employing you.
And as those benefits, particularly healthcare, continues to skyrocket in cost, the employer simply can't afford it.
And along came Obamacare, mandating that the employer provide health insurance for everybody working full-time, which they defined as 30 hours a week.
And the idiots that designed it did not dynamically factor human behavior.
They just sat there and said, stupid idiot CEOs will just pay the increased price.
And what the CEOs did say, wait a minute, wait a minute.
We can avoid this if we just convert some full-time people to part-time?
Yep, that's what the law says.
So that's what's happened.
If your job is one, if you used to be full-time 40 hours, whatever you work, and sometime in the last 12 months you've been cut back to 30 or fewer, the answer is Obamacare.
The president of the United States is costing you work, is costing you money, is costing you income.
Now, you're blaming it on your boss, but your boss is only, or your company is only reacting as responsible CEOs would.
Spend as little as you can in the process of making a profit off whatever you do, service or product.
So a lot of people that used to work full-time are now working part-time.
They don't have to be provided health care right there at Obamacare.
Well, Staples pointed this out.
The CEO at Staples explained that the reason there are so many new people at his company working 30 hours is because of Obamacare.
They cut the number of hours, many employers, so that they would not have to provide health insurance for as many people who work for them.
CEO at Staples spoke up, and Obama was not happy.
You do not expose the dear leader like this.
This is called embarrassing.
This is called sticking up.
This is insolence.
You are not to expose the dear leader this way.
You're supposed to sit there and take it.
More than 300 major businesses have made cutbacks in the work schedules of their employees in response to these Obamacare mandates.
5.6 million small businesses have incurred additional costs due to Obamacare.
So when Staples spoke up and explained to everybody why so many of their employees cut back to 30 hours, Obama spoke up, singled them out.
He said, I haven't looked at Staples' stock lately or what the compensation of the CEO is, but I suspect that they can well afford to treat their workers favorably and give them some basic financial security.
If they can't, then they should be willing to allow those workers to get Obamacare without cutting wages.
Well, normally when this happens, most CEOs in this day and age would cower in fear, head to the corner, and shut up and send the PR guy out to make an apologetic statement of some kind.
That is not what happened here.
Staples has fired back at our dear leader.
A Staples spokesman, Kirk Saville, said, the initial story, which came from BuzzFeed, which can be dubious, the initial story was misleading as our policy regarding hours for part-time employees is more than a decade old.
It's unfortunate that the president is attacking a company that provides more than 85,000 jobs and is a major taxpayer.
So now what Obama did was go out and accuse Staples of acting stupidly.
So now it's not just white cops that act stupidly.
Now it's Staples CEO.
It's not just Republicans who act stupidly.
It's not just Israel now who's stupid.
And it's not just doctors who are greedy and doing unnecessary amputations to get the extra bucks.
It's anyone on any given day.
It could be me, could be Fox News, could be white cops.
Today it's Staples.
CEO is stupid.
Attack, divide, smear, denigrate.
Now, I'm sorry for speaking factually about Jon Stewart's favorite politician, President Obama, but it is what it is.
And remember the guys like David Brooks and all these things.
Obama was predicted to be a great president due to his temperament.
Yes, he was not prone.
He was not given to wild emotional displays and fluctuations.
And he's as petulant as a six-year-old who doesn't get his way.
Anyway, the Staples people are not taking it.
They pay through the nose on taxes.
They have 85,000 employees.
And here comes Obama saying, well, you know what?
They ought to be willing to allow those workers.
Workers?
It's not workers.
That's what you call communist employees.
They're not workers.
They're employees.
They're business associates, workers.
They ought to be able to allow those workers to get affordable health care without cutting wages.
Sorry, it doesn't work that way, Mr. President.
You don't even know your own law if you think that.
Cutting wages, they're cutting hours.
They're trying to escape the albatross that you've put around everybody's neck.
And it's built into the law.
How to escape it?
Dynamic scory.
Anyway, back to the central point.
The central point, folks, is none of this is going to get fixed until there is an economic relationship between patient and provider, be it a doctor, hospital, clinic, whatever it is.
If you're able to get medical care that you can't afford, the system, you may not like hearing this, but the system is broken.
That's not how things work.
Because if you're not paying for it, somebody else is.
Have you seen the national debt?
Have you seen the annual deficit?
They are skyrocketing.
We don't have the money for all of this stuff that we're providing for people.
Anyway, brief time out, my friends, as we roll right on here to EIB Network and El Rushbox.
Sit tight, back before you know it.
Here is Obama.
This was on the BuzzFeed website.
Editor-in-chief, there's a guy named Ben Smith.
He used to be a politico and started his own news website called BuzzFeed.
And he's talking to Obama.
And, you know, by the way, this is a little side observation.
Obama goes out and talks to these little buddies.
Is it Vox?
This former Washington Post guy, Ezra Klein, sets it up.
And it really is a bunch of kids, ultra-extremist left-wing kids, young millennials.
And I mean, they are the young leftist idealists.
And they're talking to Obama.
And Obama thinks he's at home in the family room, which he is.
The last thing that's going to happen when he talks to either BuzzFeed or Vox, or pretty much any of them.
But I mean, these are really, this is hero worship time.
And when he was talking to Vox, that interview at Vox is what's gotten him into all this trouble with ISIS.
I think the reporter that a bunch of different guys conducted the interview at Vox, I think was Matt Iglesias.
No relationship to Enrique, who, by the way, did you see the Grammys?
Enrique Iglesias showed up and was not wearing the stocking cap for the first time.
And I've ever seen him not wearing the stocking cap.
The guy wears a stocking cap in the clubs.
He wears it on stage, probably wears it in bed with Anna Karenina, whatever her name is.
And actually has hair.
Actually, pretty good.
Anyway, not related to him.
It was Iglesias who asked him about ISIS, and Obama thinks he's totally at home and he's relaxed.
And that's when he came out with all the, well, you know, they're not really terrorists.
They're just a bunch of folks out there.
Backyard criminals and side street criminals and so forth.
And it was an interview with a friendly place that blew up.
And of course, the guys at Vox, they're happy as they can be that it caused Obama a little trouble because this is a tension for them.
But they got the answer they wanted.
The point is, these are ultra-left-wing little idealists.
And Obama gave them what they wanted to hear on a number of issues about Republicans, about conservatives, and about ISIS and about Islam.
No big deal.
They're not really that big a threat.
Global warming's a bigger threat.
It was that interview where he said this.
And these guys think they've hit a home run here because Obama articulated exactly what they believe.
But in the process, Obama actually stepped in some quicksand in a friendly interview.
I find that delicious.
And the same thing here with BuzzFeed.
They're not quite the devotees that the little guys at Vox are.
But nevertheless, it was at BuzzFeed where Obama decided to take out after the Staples CEO.
BuzzSite editor, BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith, said, We reported yesterday the office supply store Staples is telling its workers it's going to fire them if they work more than 25 hours a week.
A manager has told a reporter, a worker that we talked to, that Obama's responsible for this policy.
I wonder what you say to the CEO of Staples about their policy there.
I haven't looked at Staples stock lately or what the compensation of the CEO is.
Stop the tape.
But what does that got to do with anything?
What's the stock price got to do with it?
He's trying to run it down here.
What's the stock?
What's the CEO pay have to do with it?
I mean, in terms of Obamacare, nothing.
Anyway, here, the rest of it.
They could well afford to treat their workers favorably and give them some basic financial security.
And if they can't, then they should be willing to allow those workers to get the Affordable Care Act without cutting wages.
When I hear large corporations that make billions of dollars in profits trying to blame our interest in providing health insurance as an excuse for cutting back workers' wages, shame on them.
Where's this billions of dollars in profit?
A, where is that?
Staples' billions of dollars of profit.
What is this should be able to afford to treat their workers favorably and give them some basic financial security?
That's not what the purpose of a business is.
The worker, and I know this is going to sound harsh.
I'm sorry.
This is old school harsh.
It's up to the worker to provide his financial security.
You think that's too harsh?
Do you think I'm in trouble saying that?
Mr. Snerdley thinks that the 20-something millennials may be profoundly offended by what I said, and that I need to explain what I mean by it's up to the worker, a word I detest, by the way.
It's up to the employee.
It's up to the individual to earn his financial security.
Is that the responsibility of the company you work for to provide you financial security?
And how do you define that?
What is financial security?
Never having to work another day in your life?
Never having to worry about paying the bills?
What is financial security?
Whatever it is, it's an individual thing, and it's up to you to earn it.
Anyway, Obama thinks, pass a law, Obamacare, everybody gets free health care, businesses pay for it, everything's fine, and they think that's how the world works.
Private sector is a bottomless pit of endless money, too much money, and they just don't get it at all.
Hey, I just went some look at some interesting facts, financial facts about Staples.
You want to hear them?
Staples earns billions and billions of dollars in profits, right?
Obama just throws that out there.
And of course, the low-information crowd dutifully believes that businesses are just awash in money that they're not spending.
Oh, yeah, these businesses are hoarding money.
It's either in the back, the back room, it's in a closet, it's in a safe, it's in the bank, it's somewhere.
And all of these businesses are run by rich Republicans, selfish and greedy, and they're firing people and they're not letting them go to the vet with their sick pit.
And they're holding all that money for themselves, and they own five cars and three houses and so forth, while the people that work for them starve and they got billions and billions of dollars.
And now these same evil, greedy business people are trying to deny people healthcare.
That's a low-information voter's belief of big business, as instructed to them over the many decades by the Democrat Party and the media.
But in truth, here's Staples.
Staples earns, are you ready?
For every $100 in sales, Staples earns $2.70 in profit.
So Staples has to sell $100 worth of anything before they make $2.70 in profit.
However, however, yes, the take from state and local government taxes on the $100 that Staples sells is $7.
So state and local taxes alone equals $7 out of every $100 that Staples sells.
They have to sell $100 worth of stuff for a $2.30 profit.
And the taxes on that same $100 are $7.
Now you tell me that Staples is out there getting rich off people.
What's my source on this?
What?
It's Yahoo Finance.
And who would dispute that?
Yahoo News is a favored site of the low-information voters.
That's where I went to get this.
Yahoo Finance.
It's their income statement.
State and local government get more in tax dollars from Staples than Staples gets in profits.
Before Obamacare, that's just state and local taxes.
We're not even talking about Fed taxes and Obamacare taxes and all that.
But by the way, I saw a story in the New York Times recently, this week, that is just, I don't read the New York Times.
I don't read it.
People who do send me things that they think I would be.
I can't.
I just can't.
Well, no, no, I could.
It's one of these things I choose not to subject myself to.
The New York Times has a story about the difference in having health care insurance and health care coverage and how that does not equal health care.
And there's a couple of huge sob stories here of people who just bought into everything Obama said about everything, including Obamacare.
And they bought it hook, line, and sinker.
And it's costing them more than they ever paid for it before and more than they ever believed.
And no matter what damage it caused them, they are still as loyal to Obama as they ever were because it's a cult.
But in each case, there was a tipping point.
There was a breaking point when these people finally got fed up and could no longer blindly support Obamacare.
And the best way to sum it up is when they found out that despite the fact they were covered, despite the fact they had health insurance, they didn't always get treatment.
They didn't get care.
They have insurance.
How does it happen to you?
You have a health insurance policy and you go to the doctor and that procedure is not covered.
Or that required treatment you need, that's not covered.
But, but, but, but I have insurance.
Yes, you do, but not for that.
Now, if you're willing to pay out of pocket, or if you're willing to pay an even higher premium and upgrade your policy, then that you need could be covered.
You check into Motel 6, and then you find out that despite you're paying whatever you pay for the room, the ice in the machine is extra.
The fact that you've paid for the room doesn't get you the ice.
Same thing here.
And New York, of all places, the New York Times has found a couple of just total loyal Obama toadies.
I'll share one of the stories with you.
It's kind of, you know, you have mixed emotions when you read these things.
But it is an interesting point, nevertheless.
You got insurance, but you may not be covered.
You've got insurance, but you may not get treated.
And that is, the New York Times is worried about it because they've been out there sponsoring it and promoting it.
And people who have signed up gone to healthcare.gov, believing everything they've been told about it.
There are still those people.
And despite following every rule and being loyal supporters of Obama, the Democrat Party, they find out they've got health insurance, but it doesn't cover what they need.
And it's a huge awakening for a lot of people.
Here's Charlie in Hulhokus, New Jersey.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello, Charlie.
It's a real pleasure to talk to you, Rush.
Thank you, sir.
And I have a theory on why Obama's going now to Congress to fight ISIS.
And it's based on yesterday's ABC World News Tonight with David Muir.
You can probably look it up yourself on the website.
There were two pieces to this story.
One, of course, was about him going to Congress and all the limitations, etc.
But the second piece, which was linked to it, to the first piece, was more interesting.
The piece said that the air war has not really controlled ISIS, and there are so many insurgents that the FBI cannot keep tabs on them now, no longer.
Now, we all know that they're hell-bent on attacking us on U.S. soil, and we know Obama gets briefings every day.
So he probably knows all of these facts.
Now, don't jump to that conclusion.
There was a story just yesterday that he still is avoiding the presidential daily brief more often than he's reading it.
Okay.
And that's what he actually referred to it in explaining why he doesn't want to look at it every day, calls it a daily diary of death that he just doesn't want to put up with.
Yeah.
But the administration, you know, may know that a major event like 9-11, that sort of thing, may be imminent, or that ISIS will win large portions of land where they're fighting, you know what I mean, take over countries or cities or whatever.
So I think Obama went to Congress for two reasons.
And it's along the lines of what you said, PR.
One, he's coming across it.
See, I did all I could do.
I went to Congress.
I was going to ground troops to be authorized.
So that's one part.
Secondly, he would implicate Congress if something bad happened, because they're partners now to this, either by approving what he asked or by shooting them down.
Either way, they're involved.
So that's my theory.
Okay, so the theory is that the second story on the ABC world news tonight about how we've lost control.
We don't even know where ISIS is.
There's so many insurgents, not even the FBI, keep track of them.
That's right.
And that the air war that we've conducted has been totally ineffective.
Therefore, we've got a PR problem.
So Obama's got to double down and make it look like he's really engaging in doing something serious.
So he goes in there and asks for an authorization to use force just to cover himself and then rope the Republicans into whatever failure there might be down the road.
That's it.
Okay, you said, you may have heard something I didn't hear because I might have misheard you.
Did you say that Obama is committing ground forces to this?
Because he specifically said he wasn't.
No, no, no.
What I said is, you know, his authorization to fight ISIS comes across to the low-information voter, whatever, as he's going to Congress to ask approval to fight ISIS.
Oh, yeah.
Basically, war with ISIS in a stronger way than just the airwaves.
Gotcha.
Exactly, exactly right.
The nuance will escape the low-information voter.
The low-information voter, the pay, you know, the first thing, half-assed attention, will hear Obama ask Congress, use force against ISIS, and conclude we're going to go kick button.
That Obama's had enough.
That's all they'll hear.
They will not hear Obama's press conference where he says everything that this doesn't mean.
You can't.
I don't know how you win anywhere.
We're proving it right now.
We've got this massive air war.
We've got a drone campaign, and it's out of control.
We're not controlling ISIS.
They are expanding territory.
Just like you said, ABC's world news tonight, last night reported the FBI has lost ability to tell us where all the insurgents of ISIS are.
What is it?
Charlie, are you still there by any chance?
Yes, I am, Brush.
You explain something.
What in the world is the FBI doing tracking insurgents in the Middle East?
Well, I don't know how government works in terms of what department does what, Homeland Security, FBI, CIA, whatever.
I don't know.
But somehow or another, you know, we've done a pretty good job of tracking these bad guys and seem to catch them before they do things.
But this is really warning the bells that that ain't going to be happening going forward.
Too many of them, and they're like rats running all over the place.
Wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
We don't have a track record of pretty good stopping these guys in advance.
Now, 9-11 happened.
We didn't know enough or we didn't act on what we knew enough to stop it.
Now, there could have been many events that we have stopped.
Of course, we won't know.
They can't broadcast their success stories because that gives away the tactic.
But I don't know, the FBI is over and nearly tracking these guys.
I don't know.
That's what they did.
They said FBI.
Have your people look up last night's World News Tonight.
You'll hear it yourself.
You know, what I was told was the FBI was doing was keeping tabs on Americans fighting for ISIS.
I did see a story that there are an incredible, there is an incredible number of Americans going over there and signing up with ISIS, fighting for ISIS.
And guess what?
We are told that those people cannot be refused admittance to the U.S. Look, the Sarnoff brothers in Boston were not stopped in advance of what they did.
But as far as the FBI, I mean, I did hear that the FBI, again, is trying to keep tabs on Americans fighting for ISIS.
And I can understand that coming within their purview.
But an American citizen leaves America, goes over to the Middle East, Syria, Iraq, wherever, and joins forces with ISIS.
And we're told in the news, anyway, that those same Americans cannot be refused readmittance to the U.S.
And yeah, CNN's got your story too that you saw on ABC.
FBI says tracking U.S. ISIS fighters is not, that's what they're doing.
They're tracking Americans who signed up with ISIS.
Stop and think about that, by the way.
Okay, one more time, just to clarify, ABC News did not report that the FBI said ISIS itself is out of control.
What ABC reported is that the FBI says American ISIS fighters are not even close to being under control, meaning Americans who have left here, left the United States to go to the Middle East to join ISIS.
They are not even close to being under control, meaning there may be more of them that we can keep tabs on.
We don't know where they all are.
It's a pretty big number.
If the FBI is admitting that American ISIS fighters are not even close to being under control, this does not even address Middle Eastern ISIS members.
So that's what the FBI would be doing.
Here is CNN reported the same thing.
I thought that sounded a little strange.
The FBI tracking ISIS and ISIS out of control.
This is Americans who have joined ISIS out of control.
By the way, who are these people?
There are a lot of Americans who have signed up to go help the Palestinians.
A lot of Americans are signing up, opposing Israel in this Palestinian-Israeli fight.
There are a lot of Americans.
Kaylee Mueller, who was killed by ISIS, originally went to the Middle East as a peace worker trying to help the oppressed.
The oppressed here are the enemies of the United States, the Palestinians, whoever.
There are a lot of people.
What people hear in the media matters.
You know, you have a bunch of young kids, and they grow up hearing what an oppressor the U.S. is.
They grow up being taught how the U.S. is the problem in the world.
They hear all of these horrible things about their own country, about how they mistreat people of color, how we've run around and we've stolen resources from other countries and so forth.
And they get so upset about it.
And they get feeling so guilty about it, they go sign up to help these people that they have been taught we have oppressed.
And they end up, they think they're doing good works.
They think that they are involved in great humanitarian efforts.
They think that they are helping the world get a different picture of the United States because they have been taught some of the most outrageous stuff.
And a lot of these people are college students.
And you can imagine what they're hearing in their classrooms.
And some of them, they're just, they're sensitive.
They're in their own minds.
They're really good people.
And they're just up, they're outraged over what they hear has been done in the name of this country.
You know darn well that in your average college or university classroom, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, you know how that's portrayed.
And if you doubt it, all you have to do is turn on the news and find out the bad guy is Israel.
And then you find out Israel is the United States ally, and that just makes you sick.
So you go over there and you try to help the people you have been told the U.S. is oppressing.
And they end up being captured, some of them, and they end up being you.
It's just, it's tragic.
In fact, is what it is.
Got to take a brief time out.
Don't go.
The United States goes to the United Nations and brags.
Brags.
They're all excited and happy.
And we have nearly 47 million Americans on food stamps.
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