March 23rd, 2009 by drs
Having just read Atlas Shrugged, the similarities of today’s headlines are amazing.
Caroline Baum seems to agree in her article:
Obama Needs AIG’s Liddy, Not Other Way Around
Commentary by Caroline Baum
March 19 (Bloomberg) —
Somewhere John Galt is smiling.
The hero of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” is smiling because he’s seen it all before: the government’s intervention in the private sector; the constraints placed on business in the name of the people; the desperation on the part of government bureaucrats when they realize their leverage is limited; and — this part is still fiction — the decision on the part of business leaders to walk away from the enterprises they built.
That’s all I could think about when I read that American International Group Inc., recipient of $173 billion in taxpayer funds, was paying out $165 million in bonuses to employees of its financial-products group, the poster boy for risk and greed.
The Obama administration, Congress and the public are outraged taxpayer dollars are going to enrich the folks who got us into this mess. So am I.
Members of Congress want to blame Edward Liddy, the former chief executive officer of Allstate Corp., who was recruited by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson in September to steer AIG away from the shoals.
Liddy is paid $1 a year for his efforts. “My only stake is my reputation,” Liddy said in a March 16 open letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
His only crime, as far as I can tell, is inheriting compensation contracts providing for retention bonuses for certain AIG derivative traders, some of whom have left the company, and listening to lawyers on his options.
‘Directive 10-289’
Why should Liddy endure the public’s wrath for the sake of his reputation, which lawmakers will destroy in a heartbeat to save their own hides? Youwalkaway.com isn’t an option just for homeowners who owe more on their mortgage than their house is worth.
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March 22nd, 2009 by drs
Here’s another interesting video from: www.freedomandprosperity.org
President Obama wants Congress to dramatically expand the burden of government spending. This CF&P Foundation mini-documentary explains why such a policy, based on the discredited Keynesian theory of economics, will not be successful. Indeed, the video demonstrates that Obama is proposing – for all intents and purposes – to repeat Bush’s mistakes. Government will be bigger, even though global evidence shows that nations with small governments are more prosperous.
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March 15th, 2009 by drs
Excerpts from the Wall Street Journal piece The Obama Rosetta Stone
The piece refers to “A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America’s Promise. The President’s Budget and Fiscal Preview” This is the U.S. budget for laymen, and it’s a must read.
Mr. Obama made clear in the campaign his intention to raise taxes on this income class by letting the Bush tax cuts expire. What is becoming clearer as his presidency unfolds is that something deeper is underway here than merely using higher taxes to fund his policy goals in health, education and energy.
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March 8th, 2009 by drs
I’ve been using TweetDeck to search for mentions of “Galt” in all the posts on Twitter. Coming up with some interesting stuff such as this post on the Motly Moose.
What, haven’t you heard? It’s the new thing. Thanks to Obama‘s crushing tax policies, America is now punishing awesomeness and success! What the hell are they thinking?? This is Econ 101 people, punish success and people will stop being successful. More specifically, I, and dozens of my brethren will stop being successful, on purpose, to prove how foolish these policies are!
See, this visionary, Ayn Rand, wrote a really prophetic book, where the brilliant, creative awesome overclass just got tired of carrying the “looters and moochers” (technical terms folks, shrug it off). These wunderkinds move away to a sort of uber-creative Shangri-La, and ROFL lustily while the leaderless, idea-strapped society crumbles behind them.
Check it out: turns out that some completely nonpartisan think tank, the Tax Foundation, figured out a way to tell who the moochers were, and summarized it in this brilliant chart:
Holy Grover Norquist, Batman! In a nutshell, anyone above about 60k is “carrying” anyone below 60k.
Read more at Motley Moose – gettin’ my Galt on
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March 7th, 2009 by drs
I found this on Thoughts Enroute
Words by Steve Jones, Music by Kathleen Stewart
Don’t spend my grandson’s paycheck.
He’s only two years old.
With Obama in the White House,
His future’s bought and sold.
Stop this immoral spending spree.
Stop assaulting our liberty.
Let me help you comprehend:
It ain’t your money to spend.
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February 22nd, 2009 by drs
This very interesting article about the Cloward-Piven Strategy,“CLOWARD-PIVEN STRATEGY -Strategy for forcing political change through orchestrated crisis” makes me wonder if this strategy is behind the recent economic events and the Obama Administration’s massive “Stimulus” spending.
from the article:
First proposed in 1966 and named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, the “Cloward-Piven Strategy” seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.
Inspired by the August 1965 riots in the black district of Watts in Los Angeles (which erupted after police had used batons to subdue a black man suspected of drunk driving), Cloward and Piven published an article titled “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty” in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation. (more…)
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Tags: ayn rand, caroline baum, government bureaucrats, john galt, obama, taxpayer dollars, taxpayer funds
