RUSH: We have sound bites from President Obama announcing all these new fuel standards here at the White House moments ago coming up. I want to explain what CAFE is. Snerdley just asked me a very relevant and important question and I thought I should explain it to all of you. And, by the way, for those of you new to the program — and there are gazillions of people new to this program — this program is quite often caricatured, comments are taken way out of context. For example, the discussion in the first hour today could easily be taken out of context by people who want to make me look as though I’m against clean air, efficiency, and saving the world, saving the planet. I’m against none of that. I just don’t think that’s what this is about. I think this is simply the way that this stuff is sold.
Another example: Obama is gonna fight obesity. How? By making food more expensive. We’re going to fight obesity by making food more expensive. Food is a staple, can’t do without it. Food and economical food prices have been a staple. The markup on food in a grocery store is 1%. All the other stuff that’s not food is where they make their money. But people have to eat. And, of course, the market takes care of pricing things in a manner that people can afford them. In fact, I had a story in the stack yesterday, I didn’t get a chance to get to it, but obesity is said to be worse in the poor neighborhoods of America. In truth, where Walmarts are located, obesity has been shown to be reduced. People are able to afford fresh, healthy food at a Walmart, and they buy it, rather than the prepackaged processed stuff. They buy it and the people are eating healthier because of lower prices at Walmart. We don’t have to raise prices to battle obesity. We don’t have to raise prices to save the planet. And we don’t have to get rid of oil to save the planet.
If you want to understand my position on all this, understand that it comes from a desire to maintain the individual liberty and freedom this country was founded with, and that’s the assault that’s taking place here. The assault is on your liberty and your freedom, and it’s, of course, under the guise of taking care of you. You’re not competent enough to buy the right kind of car; you’re not competent enough to buy the right kind of food; you’re not competent enough to bank at the right bank; you’re not competent enough to do anything. Government has to make these decisions for you because otherwise you will destroy the planet. And now since everybody in their life wants to have meaning, what greater meaning could your life have if somebody comes along and tells you that driving X car is going to help save the planet? What could have more meaning in your life than for you to think you’re saving the planet? So it’s very Machiavellian and very Orwellian the way all of this stuff is pitched. But my opposition to it has to do with the fact that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this country.
This country leads the world in virtually every category. Well, we might be losing some ground in education. This country defined the increase in lifestyle, the expansion of freedom. This country led the way, and we did it with capitalism. And now all of a sudden for some reason this needs to be deconstructed, it needs to be torn down, somehow we’ve become the evil of the world? Somehow we are the big problem in the world? I don’t think so. I don’t buy that. But guilt sells. Guilt is an easy thing to make people feel: guilt over destroying the planet; guilt over wasting resources; guilt over having too much money; guilt over having too much education when others don’t have; guilt over having a house when others don’t have a house. And it’s all being used to get everybody to agree to roll back their own lifestyle, which is going to adversarial affect the overall status of the United States of America.
This is a great country, and we have gotten to where we are the exact opposite of what Obama is saying that we need to do. But Obama believes that we’re immoral the way that we are, that we’re unjust the way we are, and we’ve now gotta pay for it, we’ve gotta pay for our unjustness, and we have to pay for our gluttony, we have to pay for our slovenliness, and we have to pay for our greed. How we going to do that? By giving him and Washington more and more of the money we produce to let them use in ways that will make America pure once again, when all it is, folks, is a power grab on the part of the power hungry people who also happen to be liberals, who simply want to take control of as much as possible, not because they think they’re going to improve it, but because they don’t want any opposition.
They don’t want to have to fight for what they succeed in. They don’t want to have to fight in the arena of ideas to prevail at election time. They want a free ride and they want themselves to be interminable control of the elements of this country that produce greatness. They think they can do a better job, maybe we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt on that, but they won’t. There is no way that any government like the one Obama has set up has proved any greatness, has improved its lifestyles or its people. It just has not happened wherever it’s been tried in the world. So my objection to all this is not based on opposing their objectives of a clean car, clean water, clean air, safe planet. My objection is to my loss of freedom and yours. My objection is to our eventual loss of the elements of the human existence that have defined the greatness of the United States of America for 200-plus years. That’s what’s at stake, that’s what’s under assault here, by a bunch of people who think this country is unjust and immoral and has been since before they came to power. Now it’s time for us to pay the price for our greed, our gluttony, slovenliness, and for the destruction of the planet. So here’s Obama, we’ve got some sound bites here, this afternoon, White House Rose Garden, first of a series of sound bites on this new emissions bill.
OBAMA: Thank you all for coming to the White House today and for coming together around what I consider to be a historic agreement, to help America break its dependence on oil, reduce harmful pollution, and begin the transition to a clean energy economy. This is an extraordinary gathering. Here we have today, standing behind me, along with Ron Gettelfinger and leadership of the UAW, we have ten of the world’s largest auto manufacturers, we have environmental advocates, as well as elected officials from all across the country.
RUSH: See how this works? Why, all the wizards of smart agree with Obama, we have to do this. He applauds the auto industry for joining with him. What choice do they have? If they don’t join with him he’s going to take ’em over, and he’s going to take ’em over anyway. Stunning. And you’ll hear it coming up in a minute in another series of sound bites, stunning to see how the American private sector is now operating and living in total fear of this one man and his administration. Obama says he’s brought all these people together, but he doesn’t say how he did it. He did it through fear of an authoritarian, oppressive government.
OBAMA: These are folks who have occasionally been at odds, for years, even decades. In fact, some of the groups here have been embroiled in lawsuits against one another. So that gives you a sense of how impressive and significant it is that these leaders from across the country are willing to set aside the past for the sake of the future. For what everyone here believes, even as views differ on many important issues, is that the status quo is no longer acceptable. While the United States makes up less than 5% of the world’s population, we create roughly a quarter of the world’s demand for oil, and this appetite comes at a tremendous price.
RUSH: I have been hearing this statistic my whole adult life, as evidence of the immorality and greed of the United States of America. We make up less than 5% of the world’s population, but we use 25% of the world’s resources. Now he’s tailoring it specifically to oil. Well, the way to look at that is not to say that the United States is immoral and unjust and greedy and selfish. The way to look at it is how did that happen in the first place? Did we not create lifestyles and prosperity and wealth for all of our citizens that is the envy of the world? We have liberated billions of people from oppression, slavery, and bondage. We have developed with our wealth and our freedom the cure for lots of diseases, and we have shared our successes with people all over the world. We have used our success in utilizing energy to expand our economy, to feed the world. Our agriculture outproduces anyplace else in the world. We are the one nation on earth that can help rebuild entire nations after disasters or wars, and we have done it. Now, you don’t do that on the cheap.
The idea that we are 5% of the world’s population but using 25% of the world’s resources, that statement is made specifically to convince you that we are, by that definition, evil, that, by that definition, we are wrong, by that definition, we alone are guilty. We were not entitled to these resources. Well, a lot of the world is catching up with us on the use of oil, and they are doing things that we used to do. Their lifestyles, their people’s lifestyles are expanding, and we’re putting no controls on them. Their governments want their people prosperous, they want them happy. But this whole notion, folks, that the United States is by its very definition and by its very existence evil and guilty just offends the hell out of me. And now all of a sudden with this man, Barack Obama, on the scene, we are going to set aside the past for the sake of the future. We are going to apologize for all of the things wrong with the United States of America. Once again, Barack Obama, in this statement, is essentially doing the same thing as when he travels to foreign countries and apologizes for this country. He is apologizing to the world in this statement, and he is acknowledging and he is promising the rest of the world he is going to reduce the strength and power of the United States. He is going to weaken us because he also believes that there’s no reason for the world to have a single superpower.
It’s not as though we’ve seized this power, it’s not as though we stole it from anybody else. It’s that it was created by virtue of our Constitution, Declaration of Independence, the way our nation was assembled and put together. The DNA of the American human being is no different than the DNA of any human anywhere in the world. We were not born with special God-given privileges that other people don’t have. We are constituted and formed as a nation in ways that allowed the full spread and depth of human potential to flower and prosper, and it was the flowering and the prospering of that of human potential which led and created the greatest nation for people in the history of humanity, and now it’s being dismantled. It’s being dismantled by a man who has no appreciation for the greatness of the country, in fact resents it, blames this country for whatever evils and problems he sees around the world, and that’s what 39 miles a gallon’s all about, and that’s what all these taxes and increased prices, cost of living, is what it’s all about. It’s about chopping us down in size. Next sound bite.
OBAMA: The state of California has also agreed to support this standard, and I want to applaud California, Governor Schwarzenegger, and the entire California delegation for their extraordinary leadership. They have led the way on this as they have on so many other efforts, to protect the environment.
RUSH: Take a look at California if you want to know what Barack Obama has in store for the United States. That’s why I opened the program with the stats in California. Take a look at California. It’s bankrupt. They have budget deficits higher than ever. They have six ballot initiatives on the ballot today, people are voting. Massive, massive tax increases. California imports more energy than any state in the country, and we are going to praise California and import their way of doing things, under the guise of reducing imports, under the guise of reducing the importation of foreign oil? California imports more energy than any state in the country, after going green for all these years and having even more stringent mileage standards than we, as a nation, have had. After requiring more blends of gasoline, they still got the smog, they still got all the pollution, they still have it all, they still have people paying taxes out the wazoo, they are still bankrupt. And the president of the United States praises the governor of that state and said, ‘This is what’s ahead for us.’ It makes no sense, unless you look at it from the standpoint of, we need to chop the United States down to size like California has been chopped down to size.
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RUSH: Hey, a quick question here, folks. If we’re going to become less reliant on imported energy, where are we going to make up the difference? No, it’s a serious question. If we’re going to become less reliant on imported energy — forget oil. Add up all forms of energy. If we’re going to become less reliant on imported energy, where we going to make up the difference? If we import less, where are we gonna get the difference? Oh, we’re not going to use that energy? We’re going to reduce our energy consumption, is that right? Oh! And that’s how we’re going to save the planet, huh? Have you ever taken a moment to stop and think about that: ‘to actually use less energy,’ what that would mean? Hasn’t the United States always stood for growth and expansion? Don’t you think that’s the root of the belief in America, of all parents, that they want a better life for their kids than they even had for themselves? The country has to grow. There are more and more people. The economy has to expand. Opportunity has to expand. Results have to expand. Where are we going to get this energy that we are not going to be importing? Are we going to drill for it? His teleprompter must have stopped halfway through the speech because I didn’t hear anything about replacing the energy that we are no longer going to import. All right, here’s Obama, the car salesman again. Everybody wins! Your car is gonna pay off in three years.
OBAMA: It costs money to develop these vehicles, but even as the price to build these cars and trucks goes up, the cost of driving these vehicles will go down —
RUSH: Nope.
OBAMA: — as drivers save money at the pump.
RUSH: Nope.
OBAMA: — and this is a point I want to emphasize. If you buy a car, your investment in a more fuel-efficient vehicle as a result of this standard —
RUSH: Mmm-hmm?
OBAMA: — will pay off in just three years.
RUSH: Really?
OBAMA: In three years’ time you will (have) paid off the additional investment required.
RUSH: How is that?
OBAMA: Over the life of the vehicle, the typical driver would save about $2,800 by getting better gas mileage. Everyone wins.
RUSH: Do you understand what he’s saying here? Your car, your average price going to go up 1,600 bucks, but you’re going to pay it off in three years and you’re going to save money because…why? Because this little putt-putt is going to get more mileage, and you’re going to use less gasoline. Then what that happens is the gasoline tax is going to go up to make up for the loss because there’s one thing we know, and that is that government — state, federal government, city governments — do not do with less. They will never do with less, and when it comes time to raise gasoline taxes to accommodate the shortage brought about by the usage of less gasoline, you know how they’ll do it?
They’ll say, ‘We’re going to have to cut the military, or we’re going to have to cut police. We’re going to have to cut doctors, going to have to cut nurses. We’re going to have to cut the fire department! We’re going to have to cut first responders. We gotta have cuts.’
‘No, please don’t cut the cops! We got a bad enough crime problem as it is. Please don’t cut the nurses and doctors! We need health care, please!’ So you’re not going to be saving any money. You’re just going to be driving around in a car you don’t want, and the only solace you’re going to have as you drive around in this little peanut car is if you can convince yourself somehow — while you watch airplanes fly in the sky, and while you watch cargo trucks on the highway imperiling your safety — you’re going to have to convince yourself you’re somehow saving the planet, because all of this is gonna cost you much more than $1,300 a car. Mark my words. By design, it’s going to cost you more.
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RUSH: Now, I want you to listen to this next bite, because here President Obama admits that oil is the engine, it’s the fuel in the engine of our economy. And it’s gonna take a while for him to tear it down. But listen to the evils that have resulted from the use of oil.
OBAMA: We have, over the course of decades, slowly built an economy that runs on oil, that has given us much of what we have, for good but also for ill. It has transformed the way we live and work but it’s also wreaked havoc on our climate. It’s helped to create gains on prosperity unprecedented in our history but it also places our future in jeopardy. Ending this dependence will take time. It will take an incredible effort. It will take, uh, er, um, a historic investment in innovation. But more than anything, it will take a willingness to look past our differences, to act in good-faith —
RUSH: (laughing)
OBAMA: — to refuse to continue the failures of the past, and to take on this challenge together —
RUSH: Here he goes again.
OBAMA: — to benefit not just of this generation but —
RUSH: Here he goes again.
OBAMA: — for generations to come.
RUSH: We’ve gotta look past our differences. No. No. Obama will listen. Oh, yeah, Obama will listen to what we say. He won’t listen. He may listen, not pay attention. There’s no looking past differences. Whatever differences you have with Obama are dead. They don’t exist. ‘Look past our difference’s is a code phrase. ‘You’ve gotta forget everything you ever thought and you’ve gotta agree with me. I am the answer. I am the light. Oil? Yeah, we’ve done great things with it but it’s destroying the planet.’ You see the guilt trip? See the guilty trip here? And how about Obama predicting all these prices? This is 2009, right? In 2016, average price of a car up 1,600 bucks? Wanna bet? The average price would be up 1,600 bucks if we didn’t do anything. Just inflation alone will be up more. These central planners think they can dictate price in the future. They have no clue. He has no clue what he’s talking about in terms of being accurate specifically about the changes to be had in the future. All he knows is, all he wants is for you to acquiesce to all this and just give it up.
Now, I want to play a sound bite. There’s a big argument going on in the Republican Party over what we must be. ‘We have to be a big-tent party. We have to allow all kinds of people in with various divergent points of view. We must let the moderates run the party.’ They do now, by the way. The moderates run the Republican Party; make no mistake about it. ‘We must become more moderate if we are to engage in electoral victory,’ and so here you have a radical liberal Democrat president, the most radical liberal administration in the nation’s history every day programs that will destroy the essence of America.
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RUSH: All right, back to the phones, to Marie in Pelion, South Carolina. Glad that you waited. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush!
RUSH: Hi.
CALLER: You changed my life twice in 15 years, and you’re getting ready to do it again, and for that I thank you.
RUSH: Well, thank you very much. What did you do get divorced?
CALLER: Well, no, sir. No, sir. Well, the most recent was you gave me the Sleep Number Bed and made a huge difference.
RUSH: I’m just kidding.
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: Thank you. You like the Sleep Number Bed, eh?
CALLER: Oh, you know, I wasn’t able to yawn first thing in the morning for years, and after the second night, I woke up, and I could yawn without keeling over and it was just fabulous.
RUSH: Well, I’m glad to hear that. Thank you very much for the recommendation, yes.
CALLER: Real quick, before I get to what I told Mr. Snerdley. If you want to look at an industry in terror, in what so-called standardization does for you, you need to look in the health insurance industry. We are getting ready to drop a cool 50 to $75 million implementing a government standard that changes every six months. So there’s real terror.
RUSH: Central Planning never has worked.
CALLER: Well, and you know what’s sad, Rush, is that the Republicans are the ones that started this particular standard. So that he was very surprising.
RUSH: Well, I’m not surprised. The Republicans have been trying to emulate Democrats for a long time. They see how popular they think Democrats are; they see how the press loves Democrats. They want to be loved! They want the press to love them. And so emulate Democrats. Then they believe that if the American people want something, whether it’s good or bad for them, go ahead and try to make it look like you’re giving it to them. That’s what we need more of. Expand the Republican Party that way. That’s right. That’s how we build a broad base, by just saying, ‘Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah.’ It’s insanity.
CALLER: Well, here’s my question, Rush. They say $1,600 now in addition to the price of the car. Three months ago we heard that the legacy costs of $1,300 were what was killing domestic auto manufacturers.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: So we’re adding all these extra costs onto our vehicles, and then we’re wondering why our vehicles don’t sell. Why would he do this? Is this a backhanded way to try to get Ford under the bus finally?
RUSH: No.
CALLER: What are they doing?
RUSH: It could be, but the only way to get people into cars they don’t want is to give them no choice. What do you think this business of raising the CAFE standards is? Let me explain CAFE for those of you that don’t understand it. It’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy. What this means (as I understand it, anyway) is that you’ve got a manufacturer — let’s say, in this case, Obama Motors. And Obama Motors has to meet, by 2016, a Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard of 39 1/2 miles a gallon. That means that of all the manufactured cars in their fleet, from the putt-putts up to the SUVs, the average mileage of the entire must equal 35 or 39 miles a gallon.
Now, if you manufacture an SUV that gets 12 to 14 miles to the gallon, and if more people buy those, than your other cars… You’re going to have to have these little putt-putts get far more than 39 miles a gallon to average out to 39. So the purpose here is while you have shown no desire to, en masse, go out and buy these hybrids or these putt-putts, the objective here is to give you no choice in the matter. You’re going to have to buy one of these, regardless what it costs, and you’re going to have to buy it because it’s the only thing that’s gonna exist. Now, you might be asking — and it’s a reasonable question — ‘Well, okay, but what about big trucks? What about the semis, the 18-wheelers that transport cargo and freight all over the country? What are you going to do about that?’
Well, those are not automobile manufacturers. Those are truck manufacturers, and they use diesel.
‘Okay, well, what about all the jets? Are we gonna stop flying?’
The odds are we’re not going to stop flying. We can’t. I mean, we could, but we’d just wreck everything. So while you’re driving in your putt-putt out on I-70, Mr. Old 18-Wheeler in the Peterbilt is going to be tooling by you, and you look overhead and there goes Mr. 747. He’s going to be flying above you — or Mr. 757 or Mr. 777 or Mr. DC-9, whatever is up there — and you’re going to say, ‘Well, what the hell? How come I’m driving the putt-putt if all this other stuff is around there? What about the pollution they’re putting out there?’
The answer is going to be, ‘Well, there are far more of you driving automobiles than there are airplanes in the sky and big 18-wheelers, and so the contributions made to reducing greenhouse gases and saving the planet are profound because you are being forced to drive these little putt-putts.’
Let’s not even talk about the safety factor of Mr. Peterbilt and his 18 wheels tooling by you in your putt-putt at 70, 75 — if your putt-putt will do 70 or 75. And if your putt-putt does 70 or 75 what kind of mileage is it going to get doing 70 or 75? And then what are you gonna transport your family? Do you really think we’re going to be without SUVs? Do you think that when the president, whoever it is, of the United States hits the road, he’s going to do without his Chevrolet suburbans that the Secret Service is in and that caravan? Do you think they’re going to stop making them? Think they’re going to stop making trucks? What about people that work on farms and agriculture that go ahead and they buy trucks at dealerships?
Pickups, semis, whatever. Do you think they’re going to do away with them? I have heard about getting rid of them. They’re going to still be there. We cannot have American commerce without trucks. You cannot have American commerce without SUVs. Your little putt-putts? How many putt-putts are you gonna need to get your family of six to wherever you’re going? How many putt-putts is it going to take to get all of your groceries and the stuff from Costco or whatever, Sam’s Club, home? How many of these is it going to take? Are you going to be able to do everything you do now? See, an SUV is efficient. An SUV transports lots of people. An SUV conveys a lot of cargo and goods. In an SUV or a truck or even a large four-door sedan, you can get what you need at the local Costco and get it home. What if you need two putt-putts to do the same?
Well, then they’ll tell you to stop consuming so much because you’re putting stress on oil and the planet by consuming too much, which is putting too much stress on manufacturers. But I just want you to deal with the logic of this. You know damn well they’re not going to get rid of 18-wheelers. They’re not going to get rid of Big Oil tankers. They’re not going to get rid of oceangoing vessels that transport a lot of cargo. Now, you may be hearing about all these grand designs. There are going to be sailboats, all these cargo ships with giant sails on them? I guarantee you if they ever did that (which they won’t) you talk about interrupting the flow of goods and commerce over the world’s oceans? These ships are going to have a motor on them for when the wind doesn’t cooperate, and you can’t dock ’em without a motor. You can’t rely on the wind.
All of this, all of this is aimed at you, the average guy. It’s all aimed at you, the little guy. You’re the one! You’re being targeted; you’re being blamed. You’re the one that’s going to have to get out of the vehicle of your choice while Pelosi and Harry Reid are driving around in their SUV convoys. So is the president. So are all the governors. So are all the heavyweight hot rods at state and local governments who think they’re too important to be driving around in the putt-putts. You’re going to be in the putt-putt. But all these other cars are going to be manufactured. Now, they may try to make some show about an SUV getting 30 miles to the gallon as opposed to whatever it gets now and maybe with technology down the road that’s possible. But it isn’t on the horizon. When I hear this stuff, I just can’t help but ask the obvious question. ‘Well, what about the SUVs? What about trucks? What about the 18-wheelers? If we’re destroying the planet, if we really gotta stop our dependence on oil, are we going to ground airplanes?’