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Feb. 25, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
32:13
February 25, 2015, Wednesday, Hour #3
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I don't know, I've never felt more surrounded by ignorance than I am.
I don't mean here.
I'm talking about opinion leaders and CEOs and tech leaders, industry leaders.
I have never seen such ignorance in my I've never I don't know how to deal with it.
This net neutrality features more ignorance.
It's almost as much ignorance as there was going into Obamacare.
And that to me there's no excuse for the ignorance anymore.
We've got seven years, six and a half years now.
Well, let's count the year of the campaign.
Let's make it seven years.
Seven years.
There's no excuse for not knowing who the man is leading the country.
There's no excuse for not getting it.
There is no excuse for not being able to open your eyes and see what's right in front of your face.
And yet with every issue, with every issue that comes up, it's like nobody's learned anything.
Or even worse, if they have learned it, they don't care.
The government is taking more and more freedom and liberty away from individuals and organizations and groups than ever before.
And they're not even having to fight for it.
Some cases they're buying it with cronyism, socialism, capitalism, in some cases they're buying it with welfare checks, but they're buying it.
I have here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers an op-ed piece at the Hill.com.
Of all places, it's by Randolph J. May, who is a communications lawyer.
And he's been a general counsel for the FCC.
Among other things, he can't believe.
He cannot believe what he's seeing.
This Thursday, February 26th, my father's birthday, by the way, will be a fateful day for the future of the internet.
So begins his piece.
In the nearly 40 years that I have been involved in communications law and policy, including serving as the Federal Communications Commission's Associate General Counsel.
This action, net neutrality, without a doubt, is one of the FCC's most misguided.
He's being polite when he calls it misguided.
It's not misguided.
This is what I mean.
They know exactly what they're doing.
They're not bumbling fools here at the regime.
And why do people continue to afford them and extend to them that possibility?
They're not a bunch of bumbling fools.
They're not a bunch of misguided kids running around.
These are people knowing full well what they're doing.
It's exactly what they've intended to do.
Bumbling around.
Anyway, the sad reality is, he continues, without any convincing evidence of market failure, without any evidence of consumer harm, the FCC is poised on a three to two party line vote to expand its control over internet providers in ways that threaten the internet's future growth and vibrancy.
Well, so far so good.
Without any convincing evidence of market failure, the internet is a shining example of entrepreneurism on the march.
It's a shining example of competition, technological advancement.
My God, the things the internet has made possible.
No wonder the government wants control of it.
No wonder the left wants control of it.
People like it more than they like it a government.
People like the internet more than they like Obama.
Can't have that.
Here is the nub of the matter, according to Randolph J. May.
By choosing to regulate internet providers as old-fashioned public utilities in order to enforce neutrality mandates.
The FCC will discourage private sector investment and innovation for many years to come, if only as a result of the litigation that'll be spawned and the uncertainty that will be created.
And the new government mandates inevitably will lead to more than the usual special interest pleading at the FCC as internet companies try to advantage themselves and disadvantage their competitors by seeking favored regulatory treatment.
You know, it's so simple.
We've been down this road, I don't know how many times, just most recently with Obamacare.
And Obamacare is the model, by the way, for net neutrality.
The regime is using the exact same model.
From all indications, the FCC contemplates that the new rules will be sufficiently burdensome and costly and sufficiently ambiguous that the affected parties will be invited to seek exemptions from the new mandates through waiver requests or other administrative mechanisms, just like Obamacare.
So they're going to knowingly implement a bunch of arduous, complicating, punishing regulations, and then they're going to invite injured parties to come up and ask for exemptions or waivers.
Knowingly this is going to happen.
Because this is how you get control.
This is how, if you're Obama and the government, you simply take control of the internet and make it yours.
And then you implement all of these burdensome regulations.
But for most favored supporters, you can get an exemption.
But your competitors may not.
How badly do you want to support the regime?
How badly and how loyally will you support the Democrat Party?
Oh, forever!
Whatever you need.
Fine, you've got your waiver, but your competitor doesn't.
We'll help you put your competitor out of business in exchange for your loyalty to the Democrat Party.
And that's how it's going to go.
And that's how it's gone with Obamacare, and that's exactly how this is imagined.
We haven't even gotten to the nature of the burdensome regulations, the punitive nature of them, and how they're going to bottleneck the internet and how they're going to stifle innovation.
And when he writes here, the decision will discourage private sector investment and innovation.
Why would you invest in a company that's going to be more and more regulated by the government?
Why would you invest in such a company when you can't have any idea what's going to happen?
When you can't the company's fortunes are going to be directly tied to the government's opinion of it.
So you've got a great company, company XYZ widgets.
And they manufacture products and services that enhance everybody's usage of and enjoyment of the Internet.
Here come some new rules, going to make it tougher for them to do business.
Tougher and tougher for them to do business.
Their profit margins are going to shrink.
They may not be able to continue to do the business they're in at the same costs.
Maybe tougher and tougher for outside investors to invest in the company to help it grow.
Add to that the company then may not be favored by the regime, in which case it will not get exemptions from some of these punitive regulations.
Therefore, why would anybody invest in a company like that?
Now multiply that times however many hundreds or thousands of companies that do business on the internet.
Wait till the day comes where you are forced to get a license for your website based on the content of your website.
Say the content of your website's judged to be political, and the political content on your website is judged by the regulators to be an in-kind political donation to either a candidate or a party.
You have to get a license to be able to do that.
Then you have to get an exemption from campaign finance laws.
And all you're doing is running a website exercising your First Amendment rights, but not anymore.
No, no, no, not anymore.
Now you're being studied.
And what you say Is going to be judged.
Is it friendly or unfriendly to the powers that be at any given time?
And what are you going to be made to pay to change an unfavorable relationship to a favorable one?
This is Obamacare redone.
This is Obamacare all over again.
And yet the same people are falling for it, hook, line, and sinker.
And maybe not so much falling for it.
You know what's even worse than falling for it?
What's even worse is all of these companies seeing what's coming, and instead of trying to fight it, just considering it to be a fate accomplished, the new way business is going to be done on the internet, no sense in fighting it, we can't stop it, and they're going to start maneuvering now for most favored nation status with the regulators, with the government or whatever.
In which case the relationship the business has to the government is its number one concern, not its relationship with its customer base.
Does that sound like hospitals and doctors to you?
If you're the patient, where do you rank?
When it comes to the insurance company, government, the provider, the hospital, where do you rank in all that?
You're not at the top of the list.
And neither are these business owners going to be.
But this likely flood, as I resume the piece now, this likely flood of waiver requests should raise serious concerns concerning the lawfulness of the FCC's mode of operating.
As Philip Hamburger discusses in his book, is administrative law unlawful?
One of our founders'objectives, the founding fathers, one of the objectives was to control, if not eliminate, what in England was known as the dispensing power.
Simply put, the dispensing power, which is much discussed in English constitutional history, was a form of exercise of royal prerogative over which the king could excuse himself and his favored subjects from complying with particular laws enacted by Parliament.
And as hamburger explains, today's administrative agencies, in essence, have resurrected the dispensing power by the way they so often use waivers to grant favored treatment.
After administrators adopt a burdensome rule, they sometimes write letters to favored people telling them that notwithstanding this new rule, they need not comply.
In other words, the return of extra legal legislation has been accompanied by the return of the dispensing power, this time under the rubric of waivers.
And like dispensations, waivers go far beyond the usual administrative usurpation of legislative or judicial power.
Because they don't involve lawmaking or adjudication, let alone executive force.
On the contrary, they are a fourth power, one carefully not recognized by the Constitution.
So a way of translating this for you the dispensing power is a way around the Constitution.
You write burdensome regulations over an industry or an entity that heretofore is free and unfettered.
These burdensome regulations cause angst and hardship for some.
Some of them are your friends.
But you get hold of your friends and say, Don't worry, don't worry this for everybody else, but you are going to get a waiver.
Apply here.
This is how it happens.
Now, in exchange for this waiver, you're going to be loyal to me and whatever I need from you from here on out.
We don't need Congress to get involved.
These waivers are not going to be debated by the representatives of the people.
These waivers are going to be handed out from on high using power not vested in the Constitution, but nobody's going to stop us because they haven't stopped us up till now.
Now Comcast happens to be very, very, very tight with Obama.
And I just want some of you out there who think that net neutrality is going to make sure Comcast is made to deliver Netflix with no buffering at 200 megabytes down for eight bucks a month.
Right.
As the agency gains even more control over the FCC, as it gains even more control over various participants in the internet marketplace, pressures will increase for it to use this dispensing power to grant this or that company or even a particular market segment favored treatment.
The Commission already has announced that it's going to adopt good conduct rules to assess internet providers' practices.
Under such an inherently vague standard, the FCC necessarily will be granting dispensations to some companies and not others, based on the exercise of discretion untethered to any intelligible standard in any law enacted by Congress.
This is unrivaled power that Obama is demanding via the FCC and the Federal Election Commission, by the way.
They're part of this.
So your good behavior as an internet entity is going to be under the microscope.
As to whether or not they know that they're going to enact burdensome regulations.
They're doing it on purpose.
To get concessions of loyalty.
They are happily going to grant waivers.
The waivers are not an admission they've overreached.
Just like they weren't at Obamacare.
Many people looked at the waivers and man, don't they understand what they've done?
Look at all the waivers they have to give otherwise.
It's on purpose.
The purpose of the waiver is not to fix a mistake in the law.
The purpose of a waiver is not to correct something that somebody got wrong when they put it over.
The purpose of the waiver or the dispensation is to grant most favored status.
It is an unrivaled power.
Your business depends on certain circumstances existing on the internet.
The new regulations make those circumstances impossible.
But you can get a waiver from those new regulations if you do, X, Y, and Z, and it's up to the grantors of the waiver to determine what you have to do.
And you'll do it.
Especially, especially if your competitors aren't granted the waiver.
Remember the story about why in the world did Walmart of all people support the regime on Obamacare?
Why did Walmart support the regime on raising a minimum wage?
Because that was the fastest way to hurt Costco.
The power of the government helping you and not helping your competitor.
And that's what's shaping up here.
Gotta take a break.
Don't go away.
Okay, back to the phones to go to Biloxi, Mississippi.
This is Jordan.
I'm glad you waited, sir.
You're next, and hello.
Thank you.
Thanks for taking my call, Russ.
You bet.
Look, I think I speak for a lot of people out here when I say I am fed up with the Republican Party.
I think they've written this nation off.
I think they've written it off every bit as much as the Democratic Party has.
And until I see some fight from them, and I don't think we're going to see it.
I'm going to set the next election out.
I'm fed up with them.
There's no reason to support them anymore.
They're just like the Democrats.
I understand the frustration.
You have a massive landslide victory among people who voted.
Now it may not have been a super large turnout in November, but the people that voted count.
And of those people, it was a massive landslide victory for the Republicans.
And there was one message.
There was one reason those people showed up, and it was stop Obama.
And there isn't any of that going on.
And I I understand totally how you feel.
I understand your frustration.
I understand your desire to stay home.
It's not so much you want to teach them a lesson.
You just don't.
There's no sense.
They're not.
You're questioning whether or not They have a different view of government than the Democrats do.
Yes.
That's exactly right.
And I don't see that they do.
Where's the evidence of it?
Yeah, I I know.
Um, when these people uh get on television, I'm talking about the Republican Party.
Republicans don't speak with any passion.
They say things like, I'm disappointed in the Supreme Court decision uh regarding Obamacare.
What kind of talk is that?
We want to see them pound the desk a little bit.
We want to see them fight the way Democrats fight, and they just won't do it.
I know.
I know.
Uh we can sit here and explain.
I could probably tell you why they don't.
I think I pretty much understand that they've got to solve anything for you.
It isn't gonna mollify you, and it shouldn't.
It isn't gonna make you feel any better.
It's almost as though Ah damn it out of time.
It always happens though.
Okay, folks, we're gonna take a brief break from the drudgery of the day and talk to a young twelve-year-old representing the starry-eyed optimistic future of America.
He's a happy consumer and reader of the Rush Revere Time Travels with Exceptional Americans series.
His name is Hugo, and he's in North Little Rock, Arkansas.
Hugo, are you twelve years old?
Is that right?
Yes.
Well, it's great to have you here on the program.
I know you've been holding out there uh for a while, and I want to thank you.
I appreciate your holding on for so long.
How are you doing today?
I'm doing good.
And how come you're not in school today, Hugo?
Snow day.
Snow day.
That's that we didn't have those when I was in school, Hugo.
I remember having to walk two miles to to school with no no coat, holes in my shoes.
Kids today have it easy.
Now, Hugo, that didn't really happen.
I'm I was just making that up.
That's we had adults in my day telling us how tough it was for them, so I just thought I'd pretend that it was tough for me too when it wasn't.
So you've got a snow dice, you're out there listening to the program.
Are you enjoying it?
Yeah.
You you are talking about a lot of stuff that I'm interested in.
That's terrific.
At twelve years old.
That is just simply that's encouraging and it's amazing.
And you like the Rush Revere series.
That's why you called.
Yes.
Um I like I love it.
What about it?
Do you really like the best?
I like how you plot out the characters.
My favorite part is tour Liberty.
That's I only have the first one.
Liberty um went to the shoemaker place and then he found some shoes.
Right.
The time traveled back, and then he smashed smashed it out of the window.
Right, right.
He ends up wearing clogs.
Yes.
So you you're just have you f have you finished reading the first book, Hugo?
No, um halfway through.
Halfway through it.
It's amazing though.
Uh oh, I'm glad you like it.
I really am, because it's written, you are the you're right, smack dab in the middle of the age range that the book was written for.
Yeah.
And and uh I I don't know what you're learning so far about American history in school and what you're gonna learn as you get older.
But the reason that that we're doing these books is because we all love America here, and we want people to also love it.
And it's the the truth of America's not taught as much today as it was when I was your age.
So these books are an effort for people like you to learn the truth about the founding of this country.
You're you're gonna hear conflicting stories as you grow up, but we want you to have the truth uh also in your mind as you're growing up and learning other things.
I totally agree with you, because yeah, they only tell like half the story in my history class.
And you already figured that out at age twelve, and they're only telling you half the story.
That's terrific, Hugo.
Yeah.
Well, we're proud of you.
Well, I tell you what, you you've only got the first book.
Um probably ought to get your parents permission for this.
But I don't think they would mind.
If you wouldn't mind giving Mr. Snerdley your address, I won't send you the other two books.
Okay.
So you'll have All three, and I'll send you the CDs, the audio versions read by me.
So if you get tired of reading, you could pop in one of those CDs and listen to it.
Oh wow, thank you.
You bet.
You're more than welcome, Hugo.
I appreciate it very much.
Now don't hang up so uh Mr. Snerdry can come back and find out the address we need to get this stuff out to you.
Speaking of this, folks, I'll tell you what we've done.
At our Facebook page, the Rush Revere Facebook page.
You know, kids call this program now and then.
Uh they call every day.
We don't put them all on.
Uh I know some of you think that every kid that calls here we put.
We don't.
I have snurdly writing herd on this.
I mean, if we put as many kids on who are call as are calling, it would be too much.
So we space it out.
But we have put together, it's almost like a nine or ten minute video on our Rush Revere Facebook page featuring the highlights of all the kids who've called the program before.
It's just in a nine-minute when I say video, we've got some graphics that we've added to it.
And some they talk about certain parts of the book, we'll put a graphic from it up, uh, or pictures of some of the kids that uh have sent in their picture of them reading the book.
So it's it's as is everything here.
It's well done.
It's uh and it's just folks, in a complicated, sometimes frustrating daily existence of the adult world.
This little nine to ten minute video of these kids calling and sharing how much they enjoy these books, is just it's cool.
It's heartwarming and it's encouraging, at least to me it is, because that's the exact reason why we're doing this.
And you know, I was I was just gonna say it is amazing.
Did you hear this at twelve years old that this young man, just twelve years old?
This kid was smart, he was well spoken, he didn't sound nervous.
He was uh he was composed, he wasn't stammering or stuttering around.
Uh and I I just think it's great.
And I'm very, very proud to have kids like this that are becoming members of this audience.
And I know their parents play a large role in this because the parents are the ones that have to buy the books.
I mean, the kids don't have the money themselves for the most part.
So the parents are key elements of this, we understand that.
But if you have a moment and you want to be well uplifting, you want a smile on your face, go over to the Rush Revere Facebook page.
And you you can't miss it.
It's it's uh it's near the top.
And scroll all through it.
You we got some of the uh great videos and pictures that some of these kids and their and their parents have sent us.
Uh it's quite interactive and it's uh really heartwarming for us, and I hope it would be for you too, if you take the time.
It's our Rush Revere Facebook page.
You can see this video we put together.
The montage of all the kids that have called over the past couple of months or longer, actually.
Recounting their experiences and their enjoyment of the Rush Revere series.
Here's uh here's Bernard in upstate New York.
Uh Bernard, I'm glad you called.
Great to have you with us.
How are you doing?
Hey, how are you doing, Rush?
This is uh Reverend Bernard.
Nice to speak to you.
First time calling.
Well, I'm it's great to have you here, Bernard.
Thank you.
Merci beaucoup.
All right.
Anyway, I I you said something on your program, okay, that dealt with police, supposedly being responsible for uh the the bad things that happened to uh the African American after the uh civil war.
And it kind of hit a bad note with me because that's not the truth, and I agree with you.
Whatever what you said is so true.
Is that right?
I expected the exact opposite, Bernard.
Uh yeah, right.
Okay.
But anyway, the point I'm trying to make is people need to read.
They need to do their own research, okay?
Don't take people's word for stuff because see, that's the problem with society now.
People will say nits and bits and pieces of stuff.
And I was listening to that young man on the radio just a minute ago, and I was really impressed.
Uh, because the youth are are going to be the future.
Okay.
And every time they use the word Government.
Take the word government out of it because government is just an idea, okay?
It's people who are the government.
And what we see what we see right now, you got a minority of people telling this country, which I served over 21 years.
Amen to that.
You know what that is, you are so right.
The government is not an entity, it's just our fellow citizens who are trying to amass all this power over us.
Yes, sir.
I concur with you 100%.
Anyway, what I did call about was is that I kind of wanted people to go back and reflect that during Reconstruction period.
Um I don't have all the facts in front of me, but I'm thinking somewhere around 1865, 1877, somewhere in there.
Uh keep in mind the Democrats were in charge in that time frame, okay?
And they're the ones who created the laws after the war was over.
Exactly.
Trying to hold on to slavery as much as they possibly could.
And that's where those black codes came from, and that's where the Jim Crow law came from, and that's where the Kuch thing came from.
It came from the Democrats that were in charge.
Both at the I mean, at all levels of government.
At the state level, at the federal level, and at the local level.
People need to read and stop taking all the people's word for what they're hearing.
Now I will tell you, I just did a dissertation on this particular topic just last week.
And people sit there with their mouths open.
What do you mean?
You did a dissertation.
Where?
Well, for black history uh uh month, and we we we had a dissertation here with a couple of people, a couple of academia people here in Watertown.
Were you a student?
Are you a student somewhere?
Uh negative.
I'm I'm a I'm a minister.
Oh I invited students and and uh teachers and professors, you know, to come sit down and let's talk about this African American holiday, which you know I I I really believe African American history is no more than American history, and people need to exemplify it as that.
It's not a separate type thing.
That that's just divide thing is terrible.
Well, you know, it's it's something Bernard, it's a challenge.
I I've been I've been doing this uh radio program since 1988, so it's 26 or 27 years, whatever it is.
And for longer than that, for twice as long as that, it is just become settled science, so-called, that the Republicans have always been biased and racist toward blacks.
It's just every and the biggest group of people to believe that are African Americans, 93% of whom vote Democrat every presidential election.
Fact of the matter is it's the exact opposite.
And I thought that I was when when I when I made that comment after reporting on on Bill Bratton's speech, Bill Brattnick, if you just missed this, Bratton, the police commissioner of New York went to a black history month event in uh in Queens and said that the cops, the police do.
The police are responsible for many of the problems that have occurred to black people over the years.
And I d I read I was just stunned when I saw the police just enforced the law.
They didn't write the law.
And I thought the first call I was gonna get would be from somebody who was wanted to take issue with me on that and say, why don't you get it?
You continue to get this wrong, and here you come, Bernard, validating the point.
The Democrats wrote the laws that the police were enforcing in those days.
The Democrats wrote the civil rights laws that were problematic all through the 40s and 50s.
The segregationists of the South in this country were the Democrats.
It's undeniably true.
And yet there has been a giant reversal effect, and it started with LBJ and the civil rights battles, the Civil Rights Act in the uh in the early 1960s, the mid-sixties.
And that's where the revision of history began.
And it has just stuck.
And it's now part of our official folklore.
I mean, if you want to call it that.
And it just is one of the many things that isn't true.
Anyway, Bernard, I appreciate the call.
I really do.
I'm glad you're in the audience.
We've got to take a timeout.
We'll be back.
Interesting poll, interesting poll data here from you gov. Don't go away.
Now, this you gov poll, forty-seven percent of Americans believe Obama loves the country.
Fifty-three percent believe he doesn't.
But that's not the headline.
You know what the headline is?
Many young people don't love America.
I'll have to save this for tomorrow, but folks, it is stunning.
Okay, I'll have the details of the Ugov.poll tomorrow, but in addition to the details, something else you don't get anywhere else, and that is my analysis and take of it.
Been fun, it always is.
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