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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 them where there are at zero, which means the New York finance and Wall Street guys still don't have enough money.
It also means the economy is 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 house.
And throw parties.
Greetings.
Great to have you.
Rush Limbaugh on the EIB network.
Great to have you back.
800-282-2882.
I want to try to race through some things here.
Only one big exciting broadcast hour remaining.
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've got to hold up here, and I had to zoom the ditto cam in on them so that you can see them.
Despite attempts to drive, this is a Breitbart story.
Texas boy arrested because of zero tolerance policies, not Islamophobia.
That's the headline of this particular Breitbart story.
What happened was this.
A young student, 14-year-old 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.
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?
The schools are very intolerant.
So they saw this thing and it's, whoa, 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 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 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 is 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 embarrassed.
Oh my God, look at 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 is putting out a picture of what he took to school that isn't what he took to school.
Well, it'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 Dittocam.
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 Muhammad and his, it's not his wife, is it?
It's his little sister.
And that, you see, he's holding his, does that look like a clock to you?
Well, that's, that's Muhammad, innocent Muhammad.
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, ditto cam off.
Well, that's why you take that to the airport, see what happens to you.
But no, this is what he walked into school 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 is telling you that poor Muhammad, all he did was take his science project to school.
It was a clock, and these racist, homophobic Irving school people, look what they did, and they called the cops, and the cops arrested him, and he's been stigmatized.
That.
Try getting that through Homeland Security.
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 DittoCam off, and we will have these pictures.
Coco will take stills and put them up at rushlandbaugh.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 rushlandbaugh.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 have an Android version of our app, don't we?
It's over my protest, but I think we have it.
But anyway, Coco will have the pictures if you don't have the DittoCam.
Ditto Cams for subscribers only.
Now, the argument is raging here over what happened.
How in the world could 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 him.
He's a 14-year-old Muslim Haskrill 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, has spent countless posts covering zero tolerance insanity on school campuses all over the country.
Kindergarteners have been sent home 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 a small keychain gun.
Oklahoma's 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 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 that gets 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 Ahmed Mohammed, a 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, make 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 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 Ahmed Mohamed 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 John in Shelbyville, Kentucky, as we head back to the phones.
I'm glad you called, sir.
Nice to have you with us.
Hello.
Thanks, Rush.
Thanks for having me call.
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 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, one of the few.
But I was amazed last night because there was a point during the exchange between Donald Trump and 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, I'm talking about when they were talking about the graduated tax system, Ben Carson came out and said that something like a progressive tax system is an element of socialism, which is obviously insane.
And Donald Trump called him out on it.
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 have real trouble.
You're on a cell phone, and I'm having to follow you here on transcription, so I'm just not getting.
You want to get my commentary on what I have to say about Trump splitting from the Republican line.
Okay, that's why I didn't get.
What did Trump split from the line on?
So I guess most Republicans I've heard say that something like a progressive tax system, which aims to redistribute wealth, is something to do with socialism, which obviously isn't.
And 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.
I guess, really, I'm just asking what you think about Donald Trump splitting from the unified line that Republicans give that progressive tax code is socialist.
Well, the only, this is why I'm kind of Hedging or hesitating here because I don't remember what Trump said other than he's going to go after the hedge fund guys.
Right.
I'm going to be honest with you.
I gave up on this debate at 10 and 20 minute splotches about two hours and 10, 15 minutes into it.
I got up and started doing other things.
Yesterday was iOS 9 day, guys.
And frankly, I wanted to play with some things on my iPhone.
I figured two hours and 10 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.
No, no.
Did Trump say that he is in favor of a graduated income tax and the rich should pay more?
Exactly.
You have summarized it perfectly.
That's what he said.
Did he say the rich aren't paying enough now?
Well, all he said was that a graduated tax system is what we've had for a long time.
He's right.
It's been over 100 years, and it was Abraham Lincoln who imposed the first progressive tax.
And his point was just that we've had it for a long time.
We haven't been a socialist country for 100 years.
So it stands to reason that this is not actually a socialist thing, as Ben Carson was suggesting.
And as I've heard many Republicans suggest, okay.
I still haven't, I can't understand what he's saying.
I'm Ben.
Okay, Ben.
Okay.
I hate this, it's 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 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 a transcription of what you're saying.
Plus, I'm hampered by not knowing what happened here.
So I'm trying to put all this together, and I'm asking myself, are you doing a gotcha on me, or are you actually asking an open-ended question about what?
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, I guess, more fair with Donald Trump than most commentators have been.
And I thought that it would be interesting to hear what you have to say about this sort of interesting line that Donald Trump said.
Okay, well, then let me just assume that maybe some people are going to 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.
Beyond that, did Trump, what did Ben Carson say?
Just somebody tell me what Ben Carson said.
What did he say?
Not you, John.
Not you.
What had been okay?
Fair tax, single rate or two rate taxes.
So Carson can, okay.
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 disagree, Trump says it's not.
Okay, so Trump says it's not socialist, and John here likes that.
So you, okay, now, because you started out by saying you thought Trump got, you sound 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?
Not exactly.
I actually supported Ben Carson.
Are you telling me we're still not there yet?
I'll be so patient here trying to get this done.
Okay, sorry, 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've said.
Okay, if Trump is opposed to the fair tax, or if Trump is okay with the current graduated tax and doesn't want to do anything about it, I thought I heard him say last night that we're overtaxed.
I thought I heard him say last night that he wants a middle-class tax cut, but he doesn't want to do anything with the top marginal rates, apparently.
Once they have the hedge fund, guys, I just, I'm still hampered here by not knowing precisely what Trump said.
Well, 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.
And he didn't condemn the graduated tax system.
Well, I'll take, look, 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 asking about.
And the nub of it is Ben Carson claims that the graduated tax system is socialistic.
I'll tell you where 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 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 are 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%.
And the amount of money raised by the tax code was about $500 billion back then.
When Reagan left office in 1989, there were three tax rates, essentially two, but there was a 31% bubble in there.
But the top 90%, that marginal rate of 90% had been dropped 28%.
And the amount of money generated by the tax code had doubled, almost $1 billion by reducing tax rates.
So the history of the conservatism in the Republican Party where taxes are 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 popular.
It doesn't serve any purpose whether graduated tax is socialistic or not.
Ben Carson said it is.
Trump disagreed.
On this, I'd have to say that it doesn't talk about raising taxes on the hedge fund guys, which is carried interest.
And he says he knows a lot of people making $200 million who are not paying much tax, and that isn't fair.
And that is indeed 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 a rich guy, but 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 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 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.
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, $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 rid of all that with just two rates, 15 and 28%.
And revenue doubled.
Now, 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 everybody predicted once Reagan left, that was the Tax Reform Act of 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 doctorees, lawyers speaking lawyerees.
This is finance guys speaking financees.
What's carried interest?
Well, carried interest is where you make interest here, but you don't take the charge.
You carry it over to the next one.
You keep carrying it, 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 in 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 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 in forms of investments or whatever.
It takes all kinds of people with all kinds of opinions about people.
I have no thoughts on hedge fund guys.
I don't deal with them.
And not every one of them is a billionaire, another popular misconception, but 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 in Reid.
Obama surely didn't.
He might have given it at lip service now and then, but never made a move on it.
Those are his vonors.
Those are his donors.
I mean, who do you think the donor class is?
Carried interest guys.
Not just carried interest guys, but there are a lot of them are in the donor class.
And Trump has 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.
I mean, it's not helpful to the economy.
It's not helpful to anybody.
And no reason.
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?
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% are 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.
That was a great example.
That's the 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 eight words he uttered.
It just sounded like the wind was blowing through everything he said.
It's like it was on mic, then off mic.
Here's Charles in 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 a big fan, first-time caller.
I've got a question in regards to Rubio.
I don't understand why nobody is asking him this question.
Hopefully, you can help me with it.
Rubio, during the 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.
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.
This is the first I've heard that he had gone on Spanish language media and told a completely different story.
If I've heard that, I may have forgotten it, but it doesn't ring a bell.
Yes, sir, he sure did.
I mean, he told the American public one thing.
He said, you know, they must build the fence.
There will be no mandatory way for people to get into America.
Then he gets into the Spanish-speaking television.
I think it was Telemundo.
I'm not positive about that, but Spanish-speaking television did an interview there, and he said the exact opposite.
I mean, last night he said on his during the debate that he speaks Spanish at these things so that he can make sure that what's being said to the listeners in Spanish is what he wants to say and not what the interpreters are saying.
But does he not think that people don't know what he has said to them, that he can lie to the people?
I don't know.
Look at where he is in the polls.
Maybe they do.
Who do you support in this thing?
I'm kind of torn between it.
I like Ben Carson.
I like what he has to say.
I do kind of like, I don't know, Farino or whatever her name is.
But I just don't know.
I mean, right now, if I have to say anything, it'd be Dr. Carson.
Well, look, I don't know about last night, but 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 the gang of eight.
And 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 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 bumped out of it.
My best analysis here.
But the Daily Caller, no, you're right.
The Daily Caller, 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.
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 last night, but he's you may be able to answer your question by looking at the standings here.
And Marco, he got some great reviews last night, but look, it's like anything else, Charles.
If he starts climbing the ramp, somebody's going to ask him that at some point.
It's still early.
It's not like the election's tomorrow and somebody's blown an opportunity.
Everybody needs to get to chill here.
Whoever you hate, somebody's going to go after him.
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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