Glenn Beck Program, January 26, 2011

The State Of The Union Speech

• On vacation in December, President Obama read a book on Reagan. 
• But President Obama did not adopt any of Reagan’s policies as part of his State of the Union speech. 
• He did try for some of the soaring oratory, but not the substance of Reagan’s message. 
• Glenn compared that to a meal of cookies baked together with fish sticks.  Individually, they are pretty good, but prepared together, they don’t make for a good meal.
• Every Reagan-esque ode to America was followed by a “But, we have to invest billions of dollars in government.”
• President Obama told us we should emulate China and start education earlier and continue it longer. 
• Glenn asks what could go wrong with taking kids away from their parents for more of the day and handing them over to the big government hands of the teachers union.
• President Obama also said we should be more like South Korea where teachers are known as nation builders.  We should respect them more. 
• Glenn says he thinks we already respect teachers and that he feels badly for the good ones.  Also, we should fire the bad ones – something the President did not say we should do. 
• Glenn also said we should respect parents more.
• President Obama also said we need to out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world. 
• Glenn agrees, but doesn’t agree that regulation is the way to do it. 
• Glenn also doesn’t think that President Obama means that you do these things, but that the government does them. 
• That is something that is directly opposite from what Representative Paul Ryan said in his rebuttal to the President.
• President Obama also praised China for building high-speed rail and other infrastructure projects. 
• Glenn notes that they have access to slave and child labor and don’t have a lot of environmental restrictions. 
• Glenn noted that building high-speed rail and infrastructure projects seemed familiar.
• He showed a portion of Obama speaking at his State of the Union speech of two years ago calling for the same thing, plus wind and solar energy.
• Glenn doesn’t think we need more train projects.
• He notes that Amtrak loses money on 41 of 44 routes and costs the taxpayers more than $1 billion per year.
• Glenn also pointed out that high-speed trains need their own track.  Otherwise they are limited in how fast they can go and by the freight and other trains that share the same track.
• He then held up a copy of a Government Accounting Office (GAO) report that said that high-speed rail would require new safety rules, constant public capital investment and operating subsidies.
• Glenn characterized the President as a CEO and voters as shareholders and said that you would think that two years after proposing developments and the expenditure of over $1 trillion, he would have something he could point to as a job well done.  None was mentioned.
• Also, two years ago, President Obama was touting green jobs and highlighted one company, Solindra that makes solar panels. 
• Glenn thought that there should be an update on the company because they received over a half a billion dollars in stimulus funds.  The President did not mention Solindra.
• Within the two years, Solindra has closed factories and fired workers.
• The President called for the government to do biochemical research, information technology and clean energy technology. 
• Glenn notes that biochemical research is not listed in the Constitution as a proper thing for government to do.
• Glenn notes that the current regulatory efforts to control the Internet includes the ability for the President to have a “kill switch”.  This switch “…shall not be subject to judicial review.”
• As to “green energy”, Glenn notes that the figures for how much green energy today provides are reported to be:
• Wind – 0.6%
• Solar – 0.1%
• Wood – 2%
• The President mentioned Edison, the Wright brothers, Google and Facebook as great American innovators or inventions.
• Glenn notes that none of the above were government inventions.
• The government does not create things.

Country Under Stress

Glenn feels that the country is under stress.  He gave two examples of how stress was handled in other circumstances…

• A tree – He showed a picture of a cross section of a tree, so that you could see the rings.  When everything is going well for the tree, the tree grows fast and the rings are wide.   When the tree is under stress, e.g., fire, draught, insects, disease, the rings are narrower.
• A plane – When a plane hits turbulence, an inexperienced pilot tends to want to go faster, to get through the turbulence sooner.  A more experienced pilot knows this will increase the force of the turbulence and increase the stress on the plane, so he slows down.
• Glenn feels that the best way to deal with our country’s stress is to slow down and not continue the kinds of governmental actions that we have seen over the last two years.

Simplifying Your Life

Glenn laid out a typical New York City worker’s day.  It starts at 5:00 am.  The person commutes to work and puts in a 12-hour day.  They then commute home to deal with the family and other issues and finally get into bed by midnight. 

• That is pretty much his daily schedule.
• The long work day is there because there is so much competition for jobs with “a thousand” other people wanting your job, should you be fired.
• To know how to structure a simpler life, Glenn suggests that an appropriate priority system would be as follows:
• God
• Family
• Country
• Stuff
• Glenn suggests thinking about Sept 11^th to remember what things you felt were really important on that day.  If it wasn’t important then, it is disposable today.
• This is the place to start reducing.
• To fix the country, you need to start by fixing yourself.