Beck Cliff Notes: Glenn Beck Program, December 16, 2010

Guest Host: Judge Andrew Napolitano

Interviewed Congressman Ron Paul (R)

The status of the Tax Bill is that the House is in recess. What happens next is whatever the Democrats decide to do.
He will vote yes on the bill because it keeps taxes from going up.
Spending is a problem though.
Spending at this level cannot continue.
Markets are stronger than government and, at some point, they will stop buying our bonds. Some event will trigger the decline.
Many people include tax cuts as spending. He does not do that.
Regarding the $1.1 trillion dollar tax bill, nothing has changed.

Three Guests Discuss the Tax Bill

Thomas Woods – Book “Nullification” http://www.amazon.com/Nullification-Resist-Federal-Tyranny-Century/dp/1596981490/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1292547081&sr=8-1
Charlie Gasparino – Book – “Bought and Paid For” http://www.amazon.com/Bought-Paid-Unholy-Alliance-Between/dp/1595230718/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292547116&sr=1-1
Steven Moore – Wall Street Journal Senior Writer

[Comments are grouped by guest. Thus topics are commingled.]

Earmarks are a distraction.
Earmarks are the size of a rounding error on the Federal Budget.
In a few years, the payment on the debt will be $1 trillion dollars annually.
The Pledge the Republicans made to reduce costs was lame given the size of the problem.
The three words that would guarantee default are “Off the table”. Everything needs to be on the table.
The arrival of the TEA Party members will probably not change the trajectory of where we are going.
It may take bankruptcy to get us back to what America is.

Representative Paul is right.
Bond prices are going down and yields are spiking.
Government is in cahoots with Wall Street in many ways.
In 1994, there was a Mexican peso crisis. Everyone bet wrong and the government bailed out the Wall Street firms. That ultimately led to the risk taking in 2008.
Earmark bribery always works.

Americans should be appalled at the process being used for the Tax Bill.
It is the worst he has seen in 27 years.
He is disgusted.
There are 6,714 earmarks in the Senate version of the bill.
The really bad thing about earmarks is that they are used to buy votes for the expensive items in the bills.
He would vote for the bill, though.

Replay of a portion of the Glenn Beck interview of Jon Huntsman first aired on December 10^th.

Author of “Winners Never Cheat” http://www.amazon.com/Winners-Never-Cheat-Difficult-Expanded/dp/0137009038/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1292548126&sr=1-1
Mentor of Glenn’s.
He complimented Glenn and called him the finest man he’s met.
Glenn had him discuss the sale of part of his company.

40% of Huntsman’s company was being sold.
Agreed to price was $54 million.
Lawyers took six months to finalize everything.
During those six months, the value of that 40% increased from $54 million to $250 million.
Huntsman held to the original price even though the buyer suggested splitting the price increase to $120 million.

Wikileaks

[Comments are grouped by guest. Thus topics are commingled.]

Kathryn Mangu-Ward

o If Assange is a criminal, so are Fox News and Reason Magazine.

o She does not know if Private Manning is the original leaker, but the more the government clamps down, the more there will be.

Leslie Marshall

o The First Amendment should apply to Assange because he is a journalist, not just an anarchist.

o She is concerned that the focus remains on Assange and not on the original leaker, Private Manning.

o There is a limit of how much can be released, especially if lives of soldiers are at stake.

Net Neutrality

Guest is Seton Motley, Editor in Chief, Stopnetregulation.org and President of Less Government.
Two facets of Net Neutrality

The Left is against this.
It means that everyone will get the same bandwidth no matter what the user is doing, e.g., downloading a movie or sending a Twitter message.

Net Neutrality is a solution looking for a problem.
Judge Napolitano remarked that the FCC doesn’t have any authority to regulate the Internet and the way it is being run today is almost perfection.
The vote is scheduled just before Christmas.
People should complain to their Senators and Congressman. It can be derailed easily.

Thwarted Bomb Attacks

Pictures of two young men were shown.
Both were arrested because they were involved in a plot to use a bomb, a Weapon of Mass Destruction.
The Judge felt they were enticed into the plot.
Government many times goes after the easy targets.
The dummy bombs were provided by the government and wouldn’t work.
Many times these types of individuals are charged with conspiracy, which could keep them in jail for life.

Beck Cliff Notes