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Sept. 17, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
32:34
September 17, 2015, Thursday, Hour #3
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Time Text
The Federal Reserve has just announced no change in interest rates are leaving him where they're at zero, which means the New York finance and Wall Street guys still don't have enough money.
It also means the economy's still in pretty bad shape.
They've got to leave interest rates at zero.
Those are the two things it means.
Somebody in the Hamptons wants to get enough money to buy a 155 million dollar house.
Anthro parties.
Greetings.
Great to have you.
Rush Limbaugh on the EIB Network.
Great to have you back.
800 282882.
I want to try to race through some things here.
Only one big exciting broadcast hour remaining.
I've dude.
Oop!
I turned the ditto cam on, zoomed in.
I didn't mean to turn the ditto cam on.
I meant to keep it off because I've got some pictures I'm going to show you in a minute.
What did that look like?
Oh, geez.
I'm sorry about that, folks.
You had to be freaking out out there.
Just be patient.
I've got some things I gotta hold up here, and I had to zoom the demo cam ditto cam in on them so that you can see them.
Despite attempts to drive this is a Bright Bart story.
Texas boy arrested because of zero tolerance policies, not Islamophobia.
That's the headline of this particular Wright Bart story.
What happened was this.
A young student, 14-year-old uh uh man named Mohammed, built a clock for a project of some kind, took it to school, and when the authorities saw it, they got scared.
Understand this, uh schools have been targets, and therefore schools are at heightened awareness, and they have been conditioned to be very intolerant of anybody.
I mean, how many times have we heard of a kid getting sent home from school because he made a finger or made a gun out of the shape of his finger?
You know, the schools are very intolerant.
So they they saw this thing and said, whoa ho, ho, ho, ho!
And the kid got arrested.
Despite attempts to drive the arrest of an Irving teenager into a case of Islamophobia, Irving School District spokeswoman Leslie Weaver pointed news media to the district student code of conduct during a press conference held in Mohammed's arrest over a home experience, experiment that he called a clock, but appeared to be a hoax bomb.
The Irving Student Code of Conduct includes a whole slew of potential violations written in accordance with the state's 1995 Safe Schools Act.
The code addresses threats, hoaxes, and perceived and sometimes even discretionary threats and their harsh blanket consequences.
Just days ago, officials in Maryland charged a 13-year-old boy with a assault for stealing a kiss from a 14-year-old girl.
Zero tolerance also resulted in a Texas nine-year-old suspension over a Lord of the Rings magic ring, if you remember that.
Now at the press conference, Leslie Weaver said that the district always asks students and staff to immediately report any suspicious items or behaviors to campus officials.
Something is out of the ordinary, that information's given to school administrators or the cops so that it can be addressed right away.
Weaver told the news media.
At the presser, Irving Police Chief Larry Boyd pointed out that the images of what Mohammed brought to school that surfaced in news reports and over social media were not the suspicious-looking item he brought to school.
The kid brings a hoax bomb to school, complete with briefcase.
It is later discovered it's just a clock.
And now everybody's in barrel.
Oh my god, we've looked what we've done.
We stigmatized poor Mohammed.
Oh my god, look at us.
Oh, how horrible are we?
And Mohammed got sent home.
His arrest has been cleared up now.
And the media's putting out a picture of what he took to school that isn't what he took to school.
What's not the whole thing?
And the upshot is that Obama has now invited the kid to the White House.
He's not invited the family of Kate Steinley to the White House.
Shot, killed by an illegal immigrant in Sanctuary City in San Francisco.
And now, Here is, for those of you watching on the Ditto Cam.
Sorry.
Most radio shows have a TV switcher to do this, but I'm doing it all by myself.
Here we go.
And yeah, there you go.
That's Mohammed and his uh, it's not his wife, is it?
It's his little sister.
And that you see, he's holding his.
Does that look a cock to you?
Well, that's that's Muhammad, innocent Mohammed.
That's his clock.
It doesn't.
You know what that looks like?
It looks like the first motherboard to an Apple II computer invented by Steve Wozniak.
It looks like a very rudimentary 1970s computer PC board.
I don't see a clock there.
Okay.
It'll come off.
Well, that's why you take that to the airport, see what happens to you.
But no, this is what he walked into scroll with.
That is an open briefcase with what I just showed you inside with a whole bunch of other things in there.
To the uneducated, untrained eye, this looks like a bomb.
It looks like a timer of some sort.
But whatever, this is not a clock.
As the media is reporting.
The media's telling you that poor Mohammed, all he did was take his science project to school, it was a clock in these racist homophobic Irving school people.
Look what they did, and they called the cops, and the cops arrested him and he'd been stigmatized.
that.
Try getting that through Homeland Security.
Well, the Secret Service is going to let this in because Obama's invited him to bring this thing to the White House.
So there you have it.
Now I'm turning a ditto cam off.
And we will have these pictures.
Coco will take stills and put them up at RushlinBoard.com for those of you who don't have the Ditto Cam.
The Ditto Cam is for members only.
It's television.
You can watch this program take place live.
You can do it on our website.
You can do it on the RushlinBoard.com app, which is the greatest way in the world to do it.
The iOS app store and at the Android app, what's that?
Google Play?
Google Play Store.
We are we have an Android version of our app, don't we?
It's over my protest, but I think we have it.
Anyway, Coco will have the pictures if you don't have the Ditto Cam.
Ditto cams for subscribers.
Uh only.
Now the argument is raging here over what happened.
How in the world can something like how could we end up stigmatizing this poor kid?
And so people have gone back and recreated from history things that students have been sent home from school for or not allowed in school for.
Pop tart guns, keychain charms.
We have seen this story.
No charges for this.
This kid's name is Ahmed Mohammed, by the way.
Charges will not be filed against.
He's a 14-year-old Muslim Haskrull student.
Arrested after he brought in a homemade clock that a teacher said looked like a bomb.
And legal insurrection, which is a very, very great and qualified eminently qualified legal website, legal insurrection, uh, has spent countless posts covering zero tolerance insanity on school campuses all over the country.
Kindergartners have been sent home for for using their hands to pretend to be firing a gun.
13-year-old with a toy AK-47 has been shot and killed by the cops.
And then a 10-year-old boy suspended for pointing finger-like a gun.
A 12-year-old Rhode Island student suspended for small keychain gun.
Oklahoma teachers union seeks to keep zero tolerance rules banning imaginary guns.
Everybody has become so sensitized to this because of the actual shootings at schools that there has become a zero tolerance.
And so the the point here is that the effort is being made to blame school officials and the cops for Islamophobia here.
And that is not what is going on.
Zero tolerance policies at schools, which are the direct result of previous incidents, and the zero tolerance is out of control, such as pretending to shoot a gun with your finger to get you sent home is what's responsible here.
It's just the latest example.
And it's made the order for Obama because here we have once again backlash against Muslims, you see.
That's what this really is.
So Obama will be able to make a speech about how dangerous this is, how unfortunate it is, how sorry it is.
Innocent little 14-year-old uh Ahmed Mohammed, they're brilliant science project, a brilliant clock, a new way of doing a clock.
Yeah, one looks just like a bomb in a briefcase.
Obama gets to bring him to the White House, make a star out of him, uh Obama's star shine even brighter.
And once again, bottom line, characterize the United States as a racist and bigoted country.
And Obama, by the way, he's also out there.
He's not he's he getting impatient with these Republican debates.
He says he's tired of listening these guys run down America.
You believe it?
Barack Obama tired of hearing Republicans rip and criticize and run down America?
Back after this.
Don't go away.
Half my brain tied behind my back just to be fair with everybody.
And particularly any liberals that happen to get through.
Happy to have you here, folks.
800 282-2882.
By the way, the police say that they only arrested 14-year-old uhmed Mohammed because he could not explain to them what his thing was.
Why couldn't he tell them it was just a clock?
And I suspect one of the reasons is it didn't look like a clock.
A clock can be many things.
A clock can be a timer, it can be sundial.
But you look at the two pictures that we have here, there's nothing here that makes you think this is a clock.
Maybe a timer in there, but you can't even see that.
It was only after he could not explain to the police that they arrested him.
Why couldn't he explain it?
When something like this happens in our country today as litigious as we are, I can't help but wonder if maybe there's now a lawsuit waiting to be filed for what?
The magic words, civil rights violations, religious discrimination, you name it.
And of course, zero tolerance, which is at fault here.
Zero tolerance been brought to us by who?
The gun grabbers.
That'd be a good title for a book.
The gun grabbers.
Anyway, here's um here's John in Shelbyville, Kentucky, as we head back to the phones.
I'm glad you called, sir.
Nice to have you with us.
Hello.
Hi.
Thanks, Russ.
Thanks for having me call.
Uh, so I guess full disclosure, I'm probably a bit to the left of most of your listeners.
I'm a Bernie Sanders supporter, and uh, I don't I don't normally think very much of Donald Trump.
And I've actually for a long time thought that Ben Carson seemed like sort of an adult.
Uh uh, one of the few, but I was amazed last night because there's a point during the exchange between Donald Trump and uh Ben Carson where I think Donald Trump actually made himself look pretty reasonable and made Ben Carson look a little bit insane.
And that was uh I'm talking about the when they were talking about the graduated taxes.
Uh Ben Carson came out and said that uh something like a progressive tax system is uh an element of socialism, which is obviously insane, and Donald Trump called him out on it.
Now is uh I guess I'm just wanting to get your commentary on what you have to say about Donald Trump sort of splitting from the Republican line like that.
Okay, I had real trouble.
You're on a cell phone, and I'm I'm having to follow you here on on on uh transcription, so I'm just not getting you want to get my commentary or what I have to say about Trump splitting from the Republican line.
Well okay, that's why I didn't get what did Trump split from the line on.
So the I guess most Republicans I've heard say that the something like a put uh progressive tax system which aims to re redistribute wealth is something to do with socialism, which obviously isn't.
Uh and that's what but that's what I've heard a lot of Republicans say, and it was interesting to hear Donald Trump come out and say that's actually not true.
Which it's not true.
Uh I guess really I'm just asking what you think about Donald Trump splitting from uh the the unified line that Republicans give it uh progressive tax code is uh socialist.
Well, the only I I uh this is why I'm I'm kind of uh I I'm he hedging or hesitating here because I don't remember what Trump said other than he's going to go go after the hedge fund guys.
Right.
I I'm gonna be honest with you.
I I gave up on this debate at 10 and 20 minute splotches about two hours and ten, fifteen minutes into it.
I got up and started doing other things.
Yesterday was iOS nine day, guys, and frankly, I wanted to play with some things on my iPhone.
I figured two hours and ten minutes was plenty of devotion.
So I got up.
I must have missed this.
I must have missed this exchange between Carson and Trump on taxes.
I'm not trying to evade you.
I didn't did Trump say that he is in favor of a graduated income tax and the rich should pay more?
Exactly.
That's that's you have summarized it perfectly.
That's what he said.
And he did he say the rich aren't paying enough now?
Well, he all he said was that a pr a graduated tax system is what we've had for a long time.
He's right, it's been over a hundred years, and it was Abraham Lincoln who imposed the first progressive taxes.
And his point was just that we've had it for a long time.
We haven't been a socialist country for a hundred years, so it it stands to reason that this is not actually a socialist thing, as Ben Carson was suggesting.
And and as I've heard many republic Republicans suggest.
Okay.
I'm still having I can't understand what he's saying.
Uh I'm I'm Ben, okay, but okay, what I hate this is embarrassing for me.
I'm trying to associate what you're saying with the fact that you said you support Bernie Sanders.
I heard it.
So I'm wondering if you're content- I I I really can't understand a word you're saying.
This is a great you're on a bad cell connection, and I'm having to follow this on on a on a uh uh transcription of what you're saying.
Plus, I'm I'm I'm hampered by not knowing what happened here.
So I'm I'm trying to put all this together and I'm trying I'm asking myself, are you um uh doing a gotcha on me, or are you actually asking uh uh uh an open-ended question about what uh I certainly wasn't trying to do any sort of gotcha.
I just it was something that I haven't heard a Republican say, and I know that you've been uh I guess more fair with Donald Trump than most commentators have been, and I thought that uh it would be interesting to hear what you have to say about this sort of interesting line that Donald Trump.
Okay, if let well then let me just assume that what what maybe some people are gonna confirm.
Did Trump I've heard him say he wants to raise taxes on the hedge fund guys get rid of carried interest because they're getting away with murder.
F beyond that, did Trump what did Ben Cars say?
Somebody tell me what Ben Carson said.
Just what did he say?
Not you, John, not you.
What what had been fair tax single rate or two rate tax of 50?
So Carson can okay, so the progressive oh, okay, so we got a Bernie Sanders guy here ticked off that Carson called a progressive tax system socialist.
So the Bernie Sanders guys ticked off about that, or not ticked off, but that got his.
So here comes Trump basically agreeing with him and Sanders.
Is that right?
In disagre.
Trump says it's not okay.
So Trump says it's not socialist, and John here likes that.
So you you okay, now because I you you started out by saying you thought Trump got uh you sounded more reasonable than Carson did, because Trump agrees With you, you want the rich soaked, and you think you heard Trump say that he wants the rich soaked, and that's the way America's always done it.
So now you want my reaction to that.
Is that it?
Uh not exactly.
I actually supported being called.
Are you telling me we're still not there yet?
So patient here trying to get this done.
Okay, so what was your question?
I just want to know do I understand what you're asking me now?
I think so.
I don't think you've misrepresented anything that I thought.
Okay, if Trump if Trump is opposed to the fair tax, or if Trump is okay with the current graduated tax and and doesn't want to do anything about it.
I thought I heard him say last night he that we're overtaxed.
I thought I heard him say last night that he w he wants a middle class tax cut, and so but he doesn't he doesn't want to do anything about the top marginal rates, apparently.
What's the other hedge fund guys?
I just I I th I'm still hampered here by not knowing precisely what Trump said.
Um here it is.
We've had a graduated tax system for many years.
That's not a socialistic thing.
What I'd like to do, putting a plan about two weeks, I think people are going to like it.
It's a major reduction in taxes, major reduction for the middle class, the hedge fund guys won't like me as much as they do.
Uh and he didn't condemn the graduated tax system.
Um, I'll take look.
Uh now I'm down to five.
John, do not turn the radio off.
I'm going to answer this after the break.
I'm sorry it took me this long to get to where you started.
Back after this.
That's right.
The saga continues.
Okay, I have now availed myself of the transcript of the portion of the debate I was asked about.
And the nub of it is uh Ben Carson claims that the graduated tax system is socialistic.
I'll tell you what that comes from.
A lot of people do.
And you can find references to it in the famous Communist Manifesto.
Communist manifesto has 10 things that if you uh accomplish all of them, you have succeeded in converting your society to socialism on the way to communism.
Graduated income tax is one of them, public education is another, probably many of you are very well aware of this.
Where were these guys last night?
These guys were in the Reagan library.
What did Ronald Reagan do?
Ronald Reagan, when Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, the top marginal tax rate was 90 percent.
And the amount of money raised by the tax code was about 500 billion dollars back then.
When Reagan left office in 1989, there were three tax rates.
Essentially two, but there was a 31 percent bubble in there.
But the top ninety percent.
That that that marginal rate of 90 percent have been dropped 28 percent.
And the uh amount of money generated with the tax code had doubled, almost a billion dollars by reducing tax rates.
So the the history of the uh conservatism and the Republican Party were taxes and concerned is to reduce rates, reduce marginal rates, have as few brackets as possible, and of course the fair tax or flat tax variation of the two is now is now popular.
Uh I don't it doesn't serve any purpose whether graduated tax is socialistic or not.
Then Carson said it is Trump disagreed.
Uh on this, I'd I'd have to say that uh it it it doesn't.
It talks about raising taxes on the on the hedge fund guys, which is carried interest, and he says he knows a lot of people making 200 million dollars who are not paying much tax, and that isn't fair.
And that is indeed uh the kind of talk you do hear from people in the Democrat Party and on the left.
And it usually is uttered by people who are trying to build a bridge of commonality.
Hey, man, I understand your point.
You know, I'm rich guy, but you know, I don't think we rich people should be getting away scot-free.
We should be paying more taxes and so forth.
I don't know if Trump was doing that if he really believes uh That we need more rates and higher rates.
But if he does believe that, then I would disagree with that profoundly.
No way on earth do we need to enhance the graduated income tax system and start raising rates.
It doesn't make any, it does not create more revenue.
It doesn't punish anybody, especially now since all the deductions are gone.
Nobody ever paid that 90% rate.
The whole point a marginal rate is what you pay on the last dollar you earn.
The way the rates are structured.
You don't pay 90% on everything.
If there, back in the day where the 90% rate was a top rate, let's say there were eight brackets.
Let's say there was 10%, 15%, 20%, 30%, 40, 50, all the way up to 90.
But you had to earn back when that rate was in effect, I don't know, I'm guessing, um $300,000 before the 90% rate kicked in.
It was only on the amount of money you earned above the previous bracket.
It wasn't 90% of everything.
But there were all kinds of shelters and deductions back then.
And that's what Reagan simplified, got a rid of all that with just two rates, 15 and 28%.
And revenue doubled.
Now there was a there was a bubble for some people at 31%, depending on where their income fell, but it was basically a 15 and 28%.
And then as we everybody predicted once Reagan left, that was a tax reform act in 1986.
When Reagan left, here came the increases again, minus the deductions.
And now we're up to 39.6.
The top marginal rate was 35.
And it doesn't need to go any higher.
Carried interest, hedge fund guys, Trump has a point there.
Those people are paying 15%.
It's just a name.
Carried interest is just a title, so that they're not charged with earned income.
Carried interest, it's meant to confuse people.
It's the industry taking care of itself.
It's like doctors speaking doctors, lawyers speaking lawyeries.
This is finance guys speaking financees.
Carried what's carried interest?
Well, carried interest is where you make interest here, but you don't take a charge, you carry it over to the next, and you keep carrying it and keep deferring the taxes.
You carry the interest, and finally you don't pay taxes until you have gotten rid of a lot of the interest that you've carried the income, so that you're really reducing what's taxable.
It's a convoluted thing.
It's simply a way to pay taxes at 15%.
And that's that's what Trump is talking about.
And my guess is he's had some hedge fund guys, you know.
Some people think all they do is sit on their butts and siphon off money that they get other people to give them and forms of investments or whatever.
Um takes all kinds of people with all kinds of opinions about P. I I have no thoughts on the hedge fund guys.
I don't deal with them so.
Um not every one of them is a billionaire with another popular misconception, but uh it has long been a focus of many people, particularly, except you don't hear many Democrats talking about carried interest, do you?
You don't hear many Democrats trying to get the carried interest eliminated and read Obama surely didn't.
I mean, he might have given it at lip service now and then, but never made a move on it.
Those are his voters, those are his donors.
I mean, who do you think the donor class is?
Carried interest guys, not just carried interest guys, but the lot of them are in the donor class.
And Trump is is is signaled that he's going after those people.
He's not going to be beholden to them.
He doesn't want their money, and he's tired of them running the show in Washington.
So I think in that sense it makes sense that he's going after carried interest.
If he wants to raise everybody's marginal rates outside the middle class, no, no, no, no.
That's not that's that's not, I mean, it's not helpful to the economy, it's not helpful to anybody.
There's no reason the whole, you know, Ronald Reagan.
He never said it, but the whole point was why are we going to punish achievement?
Which is what the Democrat Party does.
Why do we get to stigmatize achievement?
You run around and tell the successful they're not paying their fair share.
The successful, you know what we're up to now?
What is it?
The top 10% are paying almost 50% of all taxes, or maybe it's top 1% or paying 40%, something like that, and then maybe it's the top 10 paying 60 or 70.
All I know is the bottom 50% are paying zero.
So, John, I hope that answers the question.
I'm sorry I took 25 minutes here, folks, but that's my hearing and not.
That was a great example.
That's that's a kind of self-that's why I do not do TV, because that's what people sound like on an IFB.
That's why I don't use the phone, because that's what cell phone calls sound like to me, and I didn't.
I caught maybe one out of every f eight words he uttered.
It just sounded like the wind was blowing through everything he said.
Here's Charles in uh Columbus, Ohio.
Hey Charles, welcome back.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
How are you doing, sir?
Nice to talk with you.
You bet, thank you.
Long time listener and um a big fan, first time caller.
Um I I got a question in or in regards to uh Rubio.
Uh I I I don't understand why nobody is asking him this question.
Hopefully you can help me with it.
Rubio during the uh immigration debate years ago, a couple years ago, whenever it was, he told the American public one thing, and then he goes to Spanish speaking TV and says the exact opposite, basically lying to the American public.
Why does nobody ask Rubio about that?
I don't understand.
Uh I didn't know he had done that.
He did address last night his early involvement with the gang of eight plan that he had tried to go about it a certain way and learned that he couldn't, and now he's on to a different way.
Uh I I didn't I didn't this is the first I've heard that he had gone on Spanish language media and told a completely different story.
If I have heard that, I may have forgotten it, but it doesn't ring a bell.
Yes, sir, you sure did.
I mean he he told the American public one thing, he said, you know, they they must build a fence.
There will be no um uh mandatory way for people to get into America, then he gets into the Spanish speaking uh television.
I think it was Telemundo, I'm not positive about that, but Spanish speaking uh tele uh television did an interview there, and he said the exact opposite.
I mean, last night he said on his um uh uh during the debate that he do he speaks Spanish at these things so that he can make sure that what's being said to to the the listeners in Spanish is what he wants to say and not what the the interpreters are saying, okay.
But does he not think that that people are uh don't know what he has said to them, that he can lie to the other.
I don't know.
You look at it look at where he is in the polls, maybe they do.
What what who d who do you support in this thing?
Uh I'm I'm kind of uh torn between it.
I I I like Ben Carson, I like what he has to say.
Um I I do kind of like r um I don't know, fur uh for Ferrino or whatever her name is.
Um but uh I just don't know.
I mean right now I don't if I have to say anything, it'd be uh car Dr. Carson.
Well, I don't look, I don't know about last night, but uh Rubio has been creamed for his dual stance on immigration.
He's been creamed, I don't know about Spanish language, but he's been creamed for being part of a gang of eight.
And he's he's still trying to explain that to people.
It's not that he has gotten a pass on that.
Believe me, he hasn't.
And uh and I think it's clear, it's clear as a bell what happened on that.
He's new, he's young, he's Hispanic, and they went after him, and they said, This is a guy if we get him on our team, can help sell this because he's a conservative, he's got credibility.
And I think he got roped into something and he didn't understand it until it was too late, and then and then bumped out of it.
My uh best analysis here.
Uh but uh the Daily Caller, no, you're right.
The Daily Caller, and it was in April of this year, said that in a Spanish interview, Marco Rubio says it's important not to cancel Obama's executive amnesty.
Uh I did not know that.
You have alerted me to something I did not know that happened, but I do know that he's taken heat for being part of the gang of eight.
He tried to address it uh last night, but he's he's uh you you you may be able to answer your question by looking at the standings here.
And Marco, he got some great reviews last time.
But uh look at it's like anything else, Charles.
If he starts climbing the ranch, somebody's gonna ask him that at some point.
It's still early.
It's not like the elections tomorrow and somebody's blown an opportunity.
Everybody needs to get to chill here.
Whoever you hate, somebody's gonna go after them.
You can you can be confident that.
It will.
Last night, last night, CNN obviously wanted to pit Trump against Jeb.
And then Carly Fiorina kind of screwed that plan up, but CNN went with it.
Because it still fit the bill.
No, no, no, no.
This isn't easy.
There's no question.
Last night Carly Fiorina's star shone brighter than anybody.
There's no question about it.
But we're nowhere near the end of this.
There's still much to happen here, and none of it predictable.
So all in all, it was a good night for conservatism, provided those articulating it mean it, which is always what's up for grabs.
And we will see you tomorrow.
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