Views expressed by the host on this program, documented to be almost always right, 99.7% of the time.
Great to have you with us.
Our telephone number, if you want to be on the program, is 800-282-2882 and the email address, lrushbo at EIBnet.com.
Let me, because we've got a lot of people that have run to their telephones to call me and try to correct me and tell me, some of them, that I don't know what I'm talking about.
So I knew it was going to happen.
I knew that I was going to hit the mother load with this.
And so I'm eager to talk to these people.
I just want to say one thing to all of you.
And I want to stress here that I'm not trying to irritate you.
Now, I don't know how many of you have tuned in here thinking of me, what you have heard about me elsewhere.
But whatever you do, you do not need to be contentious.
There isn't any reason to be.
And I have no desire to insult you.
I really want all of you to get this right.
I want all of you to understand what is happening to our country.
Now, the thing that to all of you, and I'm going to take the calls, and I'm going to gladly and happily engage you in conversation about this, but I want to tell you at the outset that not one of you can argue with me.
Now, wait.
The reason you can't argue with me is that you don't know what it is.
Obama has not released the details of his plan.
You may think you know what net neutrality is, but you haven't the slightest idea.
He's keeping it secret.
You don't know what it is.
You may think it's about getting rid or getting even with these mafia ISPs that are making it problematic for you to watch Netflix.
You may think that's what this is about.
And if you do, God, I wish you to realize that it's not about that.
You've been sold that it's about that to get your support.
This is how proponents of big government do this.
They boil issues down.
They find out what it is about anything they want to take over and control that makes you unhappy.
And then they let it be known they're going to fix it for you.
So if you are paying Netflix $7.99 a month and occasionally the content buffers and you think you're getting ripped off by a mafia middleman slowing or throttling down your feed.
$8 a month?
What do you, do you realize you can't go to one movie for eight bucks?
You can't park.
You can't go to a movie.
You can't buy popcorn with or without coconut oil.
And your jumbo-sized 95-inch soft drink, 95-ounce soft drink, other than New York City, $8?
What do you think you're going to get for $8 a month?
Now, you may think that's cruel, but do you realize there are people paying more than $8 for Netflix and they're not having these problems that you are?
There are certain economic realities about this that are, when I say economic realities, I'm talking about the laws of economics.
And I think in this country, economics is woefully mistaught.
It's a subject that is largely esoteric to people, and it need not be.
Economics is pretty logical.
Logic is a problem, though.
Logic doesn't allow for opinions.
Logic is what it is.
And sometimes you don't agree with the end result of logic.
But just to give you, you know, we had our last caller and he's saying, hey, he gave me the Netflix example.
I remember reading about it on one of my tech blogs.
Some tech blogger was just livid.
He was fit to be almost word for word, what our first caller said.
So I sent that email off to my economics advisor, Professor Hazlet, who's at Clemson.
And he wrote back a long and detailed answer expressing sympathy for the poor man, but explaining why the attitude held by the poor man could end up screwing it for everybody else.
And he made the point that any internet service provider is going to have a wide and varied customer base.
He's going to have his best customers who pay him the most and expect the best.
And he's going to have his customers that pay their $15 a month.
He said, it's only natural the people that pay the provider $1,000, $1,500, $2,000 a month are going to get first dibs on high speed and access.
And they happen to be subsidizing service for $15 a month.
So the guy paying $15 a month is expecting to get the same service, i.e., speeds and availability, as somebody paying $2,000 a month, and it just doesn't work that way.
So Obama and his boy, now this is a simplification of this, but I'm trying to make this as widely, blanketly understood as possible.
So the proponents of big government who want to come in and control every aspect of human life that they can and control everything that human beings are interested in, as much of that as they can, they're not stupid.
They figure out what it is about any industry you hate.
They figure out what it is about any industry that you need and really want, but that you hate about it.
And they come in and claim they understand and they're going to get even and they're going to fix it for you.
And so the whole concept of net neutrality can be reduced in one person's mind to the fact that some mafia internet service providers, the government is going to finally make them play fair, and I'm not going to have my content from Netflix buffered.
And they end up supporting net neutrality because they think the people ripping them off, the government's going to really get them even with it, get even with them, and going to punish them and going to make them stop doing it to boot.
In the meantime, over here, net neutrality is a 302-page document of regulations that nobody has seen because Obama will not release it.
Just like nobody knew what was in Obama's care before it was voted on, except those of us enterprising enough to find it, dig deep, and read the 2,000-plus pages.
That's why we knew what was in it.
And even after we knew what was in it, spending time on this program telling people what was in it, we got people calling us telling us we didn't know what we were talking about, even though they had never seen it.
Now, our first caller, I'm sympathetic.
I'm sympathetic to all of this.
And I want it all to work too.
But we're not talking about deregulation here.
We're talking about just the exact opposite.
The government, Barack Hussein-O, personally, Hillary Clinton, as far back in 1990, personally, openly said they want control over the content of the internet because there's too much, Way too much out there in opposition to them.
Now you're tempted to say, I don't know what I'm talking about.
I beg you to search your memory banks.
Do you remember all the times Obama and his buddies on the left have ripped Fox News?
What do you think that's about?
They don't like Fox News.
They want to try to get rid of Fox News.
They think if they could get rid of Fox News, they would.
How about me?
How many times have you heard me ripped to Smithereens by Obama and the Democrat Party over 25 years?
They don't like what I have to say, and if they could, would regulate me out of my job.
And you are helping them when you support stuff like this.
You are helping the Barack Obamas and the Democrat Party take over this country and regulate it in such that anybody in opposition to them either ceases to operate or gets punished or both.
It is the antithesis of freedom.
It is the antithesis of democracy.
And it is not going to result in better Netflix service for you.
It's going to result in worse Netflix service for you.
Because the business is going to become less attractive to invest in.
The government's going to regulate as much of it as they can, including revenue.
And what's amazing to me, you would think that everyone would know by now how dangerous it is to allow Barack Obama and his minions to access any private sector venture or venue after six years of screwing up everything.
How's that global warming thing working out for those of you who believe in it?
How's the wind energy business doing for you?
So Lindra and Noscloud Solar, how's that all working out for you?
I don't see any, I just, none of what they promise you ever happens.
How's that healthcare system working out for you?
Have you discovered yet the fine you're going to have to pay?
Have you discovered yet that the refund you get in the IRS is going to go to pay your fine for not having health insurance if you decide not to have it?
I don't understand why in the world, when it's right in front of your face, what this administration means for freedom, why you want to help them take yours away?
Because it's not about whoever is throttling your access to Netflix.
They just want you to think that.
That's how they're getting your support.
They're reducing you to a single issue person and making you think you're a consumer activist for the little guy when all you are is a willing accomplice to their taking over what is already the freest media enterprise in the world today.
And they are not going to increase the freedom that exists and the liberty that exists.
They're going to regulate it.
But here's another clincher.
In addition to the fact that you, you know, I'm going to take the calls, as I said, and you can tell me what you think, but you cannot argue with me because you don't know what it is.
Nobody does.
Obama is hiding it.
And he has allowed people to think that it is certain things in order to garner their support for it.
But here's the other clincher.
The FCC has no power to do this.
Something like this can only happen legislatively with an act of Congress.
Obama's YouTube video demanding that the FCC do this should have sent up red flags to everybody who appreciates liberty and freedom, the Constitution, separation of powers.
It should have made everybody quake in their boots.
Instead, a bunch of young people applauded it.
But Congress has chosen not to act on this, whether or not it had the authority, but Obama cannot.
The FCC cannot do this on its own, willy-nilly.
I was wrong.
It's a 330-page set of regulations, not 302, and they've kept it secret.
It will be implemented before the details are known.
Yet people support it.
And I know why.
We can't get past this idea that the government is the great equalizer.
The government's the great fixer.
The government sees injustice, and the government's going to run in there and fix it.
Social injustice, economic injustice, political injustice, whatever it is, we have ultimate faith the government's going to make it right, despite the evidence right in front of our faces that they never do get it right.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, brief time out.
I had intended to be on to other things by now, but I should have known this is going to light up the phones, which I'm glad it did.
Sit tight.
Don't worry.
All the stuff that I thought I'd be onto by now, I'm still going to get to it, folks.
As you know, just rest easy, be confident.
Greetings and welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
So I checked the email.
And there's a bunch of people, hey, you didn't really address what your caller said about the Netflix and the mafia internet service providers.
You kind of skirted that.
I did not.
Let me address it now.
I'm trying to stay focused.
But if you want me to address, if you want me to correct what he thinks, I'll be glad to do it.
I'm in this position here to provide you information.
I want you to know the truth about it.
I've got the only vested interest I have in this is freedom, folks.
I don't have any money invested in this.
None of this matters to me.
The money, the cost.
I've got my internet speeds taken care of because I pay for it.
It's fine and dandy.
I'm fortunate I have the ability to do so.
Other than that, I don't have any financial investment in the outcome of this.
My investment in this solely is about liberty and human freedom and my distrust of anybody who wants to take over everything in this country as much as they can and regulate it.
They don't know what they're doing.
They're not going to make it better.
And it scares the hell out of me.
I am trying to get everybody up to speed on defending your own freedom.
It isn't about me.
It isn't about any investment I've got.
I couldn't care less about any of that.
And I'm not doing this to be provocative.
I'm not doing this to get you all ticked off.
I'm not doing this to get any bunch of people tweeting about me.
I really care about freedom and liberty.
And I really care when people are about to throw it away because you don't get it back without shedding a lot of blood.
And this is so unnecessary.
Now, this Netflix example, this is not even about net neutrality.
Comcast versus Netflix is not even about net neutrality.
And again, I'm going to tell you, you can't argue with me about net neutrality because you don't know what it is.
I'll tell you what, I've told you what I think.
I think websites are going to get licensed.
I don't see anybody in the tech blogs I read talking about that.
They haven't even conceived of that.
What do you mean?
Register my website and get it licensed.
Yeah, well, what do you think regulation means?
They're going to regulate the content.
They're going to regulate what you say.
They're going to regulate what your commenters say.
You're going to have to get a license to operate a website.
And the Federal Election Commission is going to have purview, and they're going to be measuring how much of what happens on your site is an in-kind political contribution.
You haven't the slightest idea what these people are planning.
You haven't seen it.
I do because I know them.
But about Netflix and Comcast.
The dispute between Netflix and Comcast is not a net neutrality issue because it does not have to do with how Comcast is treating Netflix's traffic once it's on the Comcast broadband network.
Instead, it stems from a business dispute that the two companies have over how Netflix is connecting to Comcast Network.
This is not a net neutrality issue at all.
It's a good old private sector competition issue.
Netflix is likely hoping to pressure Comcast into offering better terms in its commercial business deal.
It's implied that this issue is somehow related to net neutrality in order to get your support, but it isn't related to it at all.
This is about Netflix not wanting to pay Comcast any money for delivering broadband.
Just like you don't want to pay Netflix any money, just like you don't want to pay Comcast any money.
Well, Netflix doesn't want to pay Comcast either.
Some cable companies have agreed to not demand more money because they realize Netflix attracts a whole lot of customers.
Have you seen all the brand new content providers popping up because Netflix is so cheap?
There are content providers now offering their content for nothing to get you looped in.
Netflix attracts more customers to their system.
These are cable companies and they're not complaining about it.
But Comcast, that has nothing to do with net neutrality.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has said, and other internet experts also confirm, the net neutrality rules originally passed in 2010 were never intended to cover these interconnection business deals like the deal between Netflix and Comcast.
And if you think it is, it's because these are very smart people who have figured out what it is that upsets you about your internet.
And they are telling you that net neutrality will fix your grievance just to get you to support it.
But this dispute between Comcast and Netflix is no different than your dispute between yourself and your ISP.
You don't want to pay them.
And Netflix doesn't want to pay Comcast.
And we have a standoff here.
Anyway, I got to take a break here.
We'll get back to the phones after this, so don't go away.
These people are relentless.
So I just checked the email.
It's getting fun now.
Check the email.
So what was your source for what you just said about Comcast and Netflix?
You know, I withheld that on purpose, knowing full well that some of you mount contents out there would not trust me.
It's CNET, one of your all-time favorite tech websites.
CNET.
Yes, siree.
Even CNET says that the Netflix push for neutrality isn't even about net neutrality.
All it's about is Netflix trying to pressure Comcast to give them a better and cheaper deal.
Netflix doesn't want to pay because they think you're already paying because you're paying Comcast.
See, here's the thing, folks.
Comcast and other broadband providers do not control your internet traffic end-to-end.
The content that you request, that's a website, YouTube, video, whatever it is that you have requested to watch, the content travels over several networks before it reaches you and your device.
Broadband providers only control the traffic once it's on their network.
And the net neutrality people say that it's that piece of the network that net neutrality is designed to make sure stays free and open, and thereby looping you in to thinking net neutrality is all about cheap content arriving uninterrupted on your device.
In the meantime, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler, who is simply Obama's butt-boy on this, yesterday again declined to publicly release his aggressive net neutrality proposal prior to a vote.
Nobody can see it before they vote on it.
And you think this is good?
They've got a 330-page set of regulations that are going to just take over the internet.
It'll never be the same, and it's not going to be better in any way, shape, or form.
And it's so bad, they don't want to let anybody see it before they vote on it.
Despite the fact that the process of adopting such rules was described as irresponsible by Senator Obama in 2007, can I quote him for you?
Senator Obama, your hero, in 2007 said it's irresponsible for the FCC to vote on rules that have not been released to the public.
Well, that doesn't mean anything now because Obama's now president.
And when he's president, the only thing that does make sense for him and the only way it is going to happen is the FCC is going to vote on rules unreleased to the public.
Back when he was a senator, it was irresponsible for this to happen.
Now that he's president, it's the only way it's going to happen.
From thehill.com, just today, a Democrat on the Federal Communications Commission wants to narrow the scope of new net neutrality rules set for a vote on Thursday that Hill has learned.
Mignon Clyburn, this is the daughter of James Clyburn of the Congressional Black Caucasians.
Minyon Clyburn, her dad must have really loved steak.
Minyon Clyburn?
It might have been her mother who really liked steak.
Somebody in that family really liked steak.
Named her daughter after cut of, well, Phil A. Mignon Clyburn.
One of the three Democrats in the FCC has asked Chairman Tom Weir to roll back some of the restrictions before the full commission votes on them.
The request, which Wheeler has yet to respond to, puts the chairman in the awkward position of having to either roll back his proposals or defend the rules and convince Clyburn to back down, but nobody knows the rules.
Nobody's seen them.
You call this a democracy?
And by the way, one other thing, I'm going to anticipate some other objections for you young millennials listening to me who are predisposed to disagree with me because of what do you think my brand is.
I have no interest in partisan politics.
I'm not defending Republicans.
This is not a Republican issue.
Nothing to do with this is strictly, totally, painfully about trying to hold on to freedom.
We're losing it every day in little bitty clumps.
Hell, it's not that we're losing it.
We're giving it away.
We're giving it away to this agency, that agency.
We're giving away our immigration system.
We're giving away our economy.
My God, we're giving away everything.
Now we want to give away our freedom on the internet.
This is not partisan to me.
I have no interest in this whatsoever.
That's totally a liberty and freedom.
It's maintaining this country as it was founded issue to me.
All right.
We go back to the phones, Melbourne, Florida.
Mark, great to have you on the program.
I'm really glad you waited.
And hello, sir.
Hey, how are you doing today, Russ?
I'm great.
Thank you.
Great.
Hey, I'm in 100% total agreement with you.
Pay like $9 a month for Netflix.
I pay $25 for high-speed DSL internet.
I rarely rebuffer.
And that's the term that these guys better get used to if this net neutrality goes through because they'll be rebuffering and rebuffering and rebuffering.
My kid can be upstairs on YouTube.
I can be downstairs watching Netflix uninterrupted.
So it's all about free.
What can the government give me?
Oh, I want free internet.
I want cheap health care.
Well, guess what?
Neither of those are going to happen.
We already know what happened with healthcare.
Right.
And even if it isn't about free, don't forget the class envy, the class warfare that has been drummed up here.
This is a central theme of this, is hatred for ISPs.
Hatred for them, just like we hated big tobacco, hated big oil.
The left has ginned up all this hatred for the providers of this content and service.
And they got people hating them and thinking that the government's going to get even with them with net neutrality because these little guys can't fight them by themselves, but the government can do it for them.
And that's part of the allure as well.
You're also right.
I want it free.
I shouldn't have to pay to be able to watch I Love Lucy.
I shouldn't have to pay for it.
And that just blows me away, too.
How the people that provide this content and produce it, create it, how they get paid if the users don't want to pay anything for it.
Well, and their technical mental midgetry also comes into play because they really don't understand all the what, fors, and whys, what it takes to get the service to them.
And when you have to, when the providers have to add more and more and more servers to absorb all of this cheap internet, it's just going to bog it down.
And they're certainly not going to put a bunch of financial capital into more servers just so they can provide better service for less cost.
Exactly.
It's supply and demand.
And that's why, in your estimation, that's why people are going to be seeing the word buffering or rebuffering more and more.
Exactly.
I work on IT, so I know it to be true.
You work in IT, so you know it to be true.
Well, I'm glad to have your endorsement out there, Mark.
I really am.
All right, Rush.
You have a great day.
You do the same.
To Atlanta next.
Johnny, great to have you with us, sir.
You're next.
Hello.
Hey, Russ.
Thanks for having me on.
I love the show.
So not saying that this regulation is at all the way to solve any kind of problem.
Obviously, we don't know what's in it, so we can't really judge it.
But I do think there's one part of this debate that at least merits some attention, and that's the idea of tiered internet.
If you've heard about that.
So just to give you an example, let's say a very popular site like Fox News, even your site.
So, what if the internet companies could be able to regulate traffic to the sites?
So, for example, if I, you know, someone's got basic internet, they try to go to Fox News or your site, and instead of getting the content, a little pop-up comes up and says, hey, you actually don't have access to that site because you don't have one of the tiered plans that includes that site.
Shouldn't we be in favor of at least some regulation so that service providers wouldn't be able to restrict access to content across the internet?
Okay, that's a great question.
It's an absolutely wonderful, great question.
Are you ready for my answer?
I am.
Net neutrality is going to give you exactly what you just described.
The government is going to assume the position of determining which sites are being accessed more than others.
And if, say, Fox News or RushLimbaugh.com is being read by many more people than, say, MSNBC's site, the government will say it's not fair.
Too many people or not enough people are accessing MSNBC.
So they will order under the terms of neutrality.
They will order Fox News or RushLimbaugh.com throttled and access feared to MSNBC.
That's what they want.
That's what you just described.
You think it's happening now.
That is exactly what they're going to do with this.
But isn't the interesting thing, though, is that that idea has been kicked around by internet service providers for years now of providing a service to customers.
There would be a tiered service like that.
So it wouldn't be the government doing it.
It would be the ISPs themselves.
But you're going to have the choice.
You'd have the choice to opt in.
Look, it's like anything else.
If some ISPs want to offer tiered service, it's all up to whether or not they can sell it, make a profit offering it, have another people sign up to it and use it as the way it's intended, however that would be.
What I'm telling you, Johnny, is all right.
Let me throw one more thing in the mix here.
I'm not just speaking off the cuff here and off the top of my head.
Two or three years ago, I had an occasion to speak with, shall we say, somebody intimately involved with what all of this is about.
And what you just described is exactly what this person was trying to get me to pay attention to.
This person was trying to warn me that net neutrality actually is going to mean the policing of content.
And it really, while you think it's about cost and access to your entertainment, what it really is going to be, and we remember, we haven't seen the regulations because they're keeping them under lock and key, 330 pages.
What it's really going to be is people in positions of political power making, for example, MSNBC has no audience.
Nobody wants to watch them.
It's so bad, they're starting to fire everybody now.
It's so bad, MSNBC is almost on the verge of announcing that they are going to abandon liberal ideology as their format.
Got the story in the stack today.
It's that bad.
Now, if cable were regulated the way they want to regulate the internet, and if the signal to your TV set arrived the same way it does to your computer, Obama or whoever could look at the fact that MSNBC has got no viewers and see that Fox has all of them and CNN's got something.
That's not fair.
This isn't neutral.
This isn't equal.
And they would take action to make sure that probably Fox would lose some viewers by having access denied so that MSNBC, under the guise of that point of view, having an equal right to exposure.
But here's the thing.
Folks, I'm not making this up.
When net neutrality, when I was first warned about it by a government official during the Bush administration, When I was first warned about this, I was told that the people dreaming of this are actually dreaming of controlling content, political content, and making sure that one political point of view does not have more exposure than another.
Meaning, if there's 50 conservative sites and 10 liberal sites, the 50 conservative sites are going to be punished.
Access to them will be limited because it's not fair.
And that's what the original warning I received about net neutrality was.
All this stuff you're hearing about limiting your content provider and prices and Netflix, all that's just hullabaloo to get you interested in it, to get you supporting it because they think they've made you believe they're going to fix your grievance.
But it really is about the Democrat Party making sure that there isn't another Rush Limbaugh, making sure that there isn't another Fox News on the Internet.
It's about making sure they don't lose the battle for content control on the Internet.
That's what it really is all about.
And you can't argue with me because you haven't seen the regs.
They're not releasing them.
You can argue with me all you want, but you have no ground to stand on.
You're in quicksand.
You're in a sinkhole because you don't know.
And you can tell me I'm full of it and all wet all you want, but I'm not.
And you don't know.
How do I know?
Because I know liberals.
I know exactly who they are.
I've been victimized by them.
I can't tell you how many times over 25 years.
I know exactly how they are.
I know what their objectives are.
I know what their wish list is.
And I'm not on it.
And neither is Fox News.
They want control of the internet for political ideological content.
No mistake.
Meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network.
Here is Byron in Baltimore.
You're next.
It's great to have you with us, Byron.
Hello.
Thank you so much, Rush.
I appreciate the call.
My wife and I really enjoy your show so much.
I am a senior advisory engineer for a military defense contractor.
And while we've been talking a lot about Netflix and so forth, and I appreciate the various viewpoints, and I also appreciate the idea that we really don't know what's in this regulation yet, given the regime's track record with laws and so forth, my hopes are not good right now that this is good for anybody.
This is what I don't understand.
With all of the evidence in front of everybody, I mean, did anybody think when Obama was elected, he's going to have his wife take over the food industry?
A school lunch program?
Did anybody think that?
No, but he did.
Did anybody think that health care was going to become the abomination that it was?
Everybody had good intentions associated with this.
It's right in front of everybody's face what's going to happen here, and yet they don't see the same danger that already we face in other areas.
It deboggles my mind.
I'd like to suggest something, if I may.
Sure.
And that is that one of the big areas that are going to be impacted by this is the military defense business.
Now, why would that be true?
I can contrast being an engineer today and being an engineer back in the late 70s.
In the late 70s, when I needed information on a transistor, on a spectrum analyzer, whatever it was, I had to get the name of the manufacturer, find out where they're located, call them up, talk to a sales guy, have them send me a brochure that could take anywhere from one to two weeks for me to get before I could even start doing anything with that component or device.
Today, if I need information on a spectrum analyzer, or if I need software for a spectrum analyzer, or information on a transistor, I go online and in 10 minutes I can download whatever I need.
Now, I'm one engineer working for one military defense contractor.
All the people that do the same kinds of things that I do in the same manner that I do it, and that's a good percentage of that engineering community, are going to be impacted by anything that impedes the flow of information, whether it's bad or indifferent, on the internet.
Think of your toilet getting stopped up for too much toilet paper.
Well, you may not like that analogy, but and then you might think, well, it's the military that are going to have an exemption.
See, why should that's another ball of wax, but I got to take a break.
Don't call it.
Okay, we're going to move on to the other things in the stack of stuff here today, folks.
There are other things I want to get to.
If you want to still call about all this net neutrality stuff, even though you have no idea what it is, you continue to have at it.