TODD: Let me set the scene for you. Mayor Pete — and this is part of this theme of this first segment. Rush is gonna remind us to not accept liberal premises. So, part of the theme of this segment is to not use language of our opponents and our political enemies. So, I want to set the scene. Mayor Pete is fascinated about doing what they have done in Washington State and in Oregon, which is to pretend to invent something called a per-mileage tax, and even people who are free marketeers fall into this trap.

“Oh, well, it’s a usage tax. That’s good!” Number one, the gas tax is a usage tax. If you purchase five gallons of gasoline and you go back and purchase more, you’re paying for the usage. Your call rolls by, every mile you go subtracts the gas from your tank and a good portion of that, up to half or three-quarters is going to taxes, depending upon where you live. So, this is not about a per mileage tax.

This is a surveillance tax. And I speak from experience. This is you paying to be surveilled. This is you paying to be blackmailed. They’re going to blackmail you with your own money and with your permission, if we allow this. It’s a surveillance tax. Oregon and Washington have pushed this. It is you either go to the DMV every year — pardon me, four times a year — and let some bureaucrat take a picture of how many miles you’ve traveled and you pay based on that, or you put a smartphone app or a GPS unit in your car.

It doesn’t just track how far you drive. It tracks things like that the computer thinks you made too aggressive of a turn. Calling it a per-mile tax and assessing that not just accepting the premise. It’s accepting the language of our political enemies. This is a surveillance tax because it turns into something that just surveils you and blackmails you. For instance, the further away you drive from the city core, the more money it can charge you.

If you drive at times where the government has decreed that you shall not drive but you should take a bus or choo-choo train, it will do that. Some days it may decide to double or triple the cost to drive into a city. It may demand that you pick people up and become a volunteer Uber lest you pay more in taxes. This is a surveillance tax, and we need to call it that. Now, let me set the specific seen for you before we hear from Mayor Pete.

There’s great footage of Mayor Pete and four SUVs in downtown D.C. Mayor Pete unloads his bicycle from one of the four SUVs. He then takes a lot of time to get on his bicycle as the four SUVs surround him, and then Mayor Pete pretends to bike to work. All show, all virtual signaling. And he’s talking about this during an interview last Friday on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street with anchor Kayla Tausche. Mayor Pete, secretary of transportation, was asked, “What about a mileage-based tax?”

BUTTIGIEG: I think that shows a lot of promise! If we believe in that so-called user pays principle, the idea of part of how we pay for roads is you pay based on how much you drive. Uh, the gas tax used to be the obvious way to do it; it’s not anymore so a so-called vehicle miles-traveled tax or mileage tax — whatever you want to call it — could be a way to do it.

TODD: So it’s not anymore “why.” What, physics have changed? The petroleum we burn now comes back, it’s reinvented? It reconstitutes? No. They want to be able to surveil and blackmail you. I know people who tested the per-mile app in Washington state. They got notes like, “Well, that turn was a little tight,” and, “You braked too fast,” and, “Hey, I think you were in the HOV line.

“You know, we’ll just go ahead and send a ticket to you — or better yet, why don’t we just charge your credit card.” That’s what this is about. Do not accept the language of our political enemies. Now, Rush was a brilliant teacher. We know that. Here in this clip he explains to a caller, it goes beyond not using the enemy’s words. We must never accept their premises.

CALLER: My question, Rush, is basically, I want to know why such a small minority of people like the environmental wackos can stop drilling in ANWR and they can stop us from making new refineries. But issues like tax cuts and border security are clearly supported by the majority and they’re ignored by the people in Washington. What’s the deal?

RUSH: I’m going to answer the question for you. It’s a good question, and the answer is: it’s not such a small minority. The problem is politicians. Politicians generally poll and focus group and find out what people want, and give it to them. That’s how you stay elected. That’s what’s so frustrating to people like us. We want leadership. We don’t want people bending and shaping with the wind. We want leadership.

We want somebody challenging Democrat liberal premises. “Stop Accepting Liberal Premises.” But that’s what we do. Let me give you a little story as an example here from the San Francisco Chronicle today. They went out and they took a poll of people. “Californians support the idea of charging ‘green’ vehicle fees that would make drivers of gas guzzlers pay higher taxes and offer discounts for those driving less-polluting vehicles, according to a survey by a transportation researcher at San Jose State University.

“The state [of California] now charges drivers registration and licensing fees and gasoline taxes at rates that do not take into account vehicles” pollution levels. “But the survey, conducted by Asha Weinstein Agrawal, a research associate with the university’s Mineta Transportation Institute” named after Norman Mineta “found that Californians would support a variety of taxes and fees to raise money for transportation improvements as well as combat global warming, including:

“Raising vehicle registration fees, which now average $31, to an average of $62,” doubling them, “and having higher-polluting vehicles pay higher rates and cleaner cars lower rates. …” They also believe in “[l]evying a mileage-based tax that would replace the 18-cents-per-gallon gasoline tax. The per-mile amount would vary depending on how much a vehicle polluted the air. ‘The public is very supportive of these green taxes and fees,'” said the researcher at San Jose State.

This is how it’s worked. They have created all this guilt, and you’ve got people in San Francisco who think this has to be done, or has to be done, and when you have linguine-spined politicians who simply care about being reelected… It’s not a minority of people that are getting things done. It’s not even a small minority of people that are getting things done.

This is the thing. Liberals get hold of something, and they don’t stop. No matter how much of it they get, it’s never enough. They want to keep going. This is traceable to 1980 to 1982, ’83. This is when the modern global warming movement began, and it’s been steady, and they just keep plodding away, and here we are now 28 years later, 25 years later, and it’s taken hold. So we’re accepting the premise and trying to refute it a little bit. We shoulda stomped on it way back when.

I tell you what’s going to happen, especially with this new proposal that I see that this researcher I just mentioned that’s in the Chronicle today, San Francisco Chronicle, raising registration fees, and then getting into a sort of a two-tiered or three-tiered tax plan based on the kind of car you drive. They’re going to raise taxes on the gas guzzlers. They’re going to reduce gas taxes on what are called environmentally safe, nonpolluting cars.

This is going to affect their tax rate income. If it doesn’t go up… It’s like when the gas price went up and the state was urging people to drive less, save the planet, drive less, be more economical. People, like sheep, did what the state said. It didn’t take long for the state to realize, “Hey, our gas tax revenue’s plummeting here,” and so they raised gas taxes to make up for people following orders to drive less and go by more economical cars.

So the bottom line is: When you have a state government like yours in California, Wayne, which is run by liberal Democrats, you can make book on the fact that your government expenses — taxes — are going to go up every year regardless what you do to reduce them.

TODD: They never stop. They keep plodding along. Twenty-eight years ago, he was tracking this. Now look at where this has advanced. It’s advanced to a step of we’re going to need to track every inch you drive. We’re going to need to review your driving. So we cannot accept the per-mile charge. It is a surveillance tax.

This week we played Rush response to the immunity cards that you would present to businesses. See, I’m immune to this virus. Now that’s graduated up into vaccine passports, which I would call Big Pharma passports. I think it’s cloaked government. It’s a government passport. It’s a business passport. It’s our traveling papers. But let’s not call it a vaccine passport.

Speaking of that, Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida has just signed executive order 2181 — it’s just been officially issued –i prohibiting the use of vaccine passports both by the government and business entities in Florida. Just as maybe an EIB family, could we just all face toward Florida and give Ron DeSantis a thumbs-up? Thank you, Governor.