Political Ruminations

Morning Quote: Alan Greenspan on Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’

Alan Greenspan is among the most well known of Ayn Rand's supporters, and in fact, he became a member of the Collective upon marrying another Rand¹ disciple.

Mr. Greenspan made the following comment in defense of Rand's book, 'Atlas Shrugged', in a letter to The New York Times in 1957:

Atlas Shrugged’ is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should.

In other words, only the most successful/richest among us, deserves to survive.

Worthy of noting, sales of 'Atlas Shrugged' have soared in recent years. One poll ranked it as the second most influential book of the 20th century.....second only to the Bible.

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¹ Mark Ames on Ayn Rand's worship of an American serial killer:

The best way to get to the bottom of Ayn Rand's beliefs is to take a look at how she developed the superhero of her novel, Atlas Shrugged, John Galt. Back in the late 1920s, as Ayn Rand was working out her philosophy, she became enthralled by a real-life American serial killer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation. Rand filled her early notebooks with worshipful praise of Hickman. According to biographer Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market, Rand was so smitten with Hickman that she modeled her first literary creation -- Danny Renahan, the protagonist of her unfinished first novel, The Little Street -- on him.

Morning Quote

Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, from his excellent piece on the foreclosure crisis:

For most people, the former bit about homeowners not paying their damn bills is the important part, while the latter, about the sudden and strange inability of the world's biggest and wealthiest banks to keep proper records, is incidental. Just a little office sloppiness, and who cares?

[I]n America, it's far more shameful to owe money than it is to steal it.

Kentucky's Greedy Senator Elect, Rand Paul on Bush Tax Cuts For the Wealthy - "There are no poor people"

Last night in Kentucky, Rand Paul talked to Wolf Blitzer [video below]about the Bush tax cuts and why he wants to shield the ultra-wealthy and the mega corporations. Think Progress:

Speaking to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Paul announced his intention to do anything it takes to shield the privileged rich and corporate America. Asked if he would end the $830 billion, unpaid-for Bush tax cuts to the rich and return tax rates for the wealthiest bracket to Clinton-era levels, Paul snapped and said such a move would cause a “second great depression” and declared that “anybody who proposes such a policy really is, I think, unfit to be making decisions.”

Paul then clarified his delusional worldview by telling Blitzer that “there are no rich” and “there are no poor.” In Paul’s mind, even taxing yachts would somehow punish the working poor in Kentucky. “We all either work for rich people or we sell stuff to rich people,” concluded Rand:

PAUL: I would say that they must be in favor of a second American depression, because if you raise taxes to that consequence, that’s what will happen in this country. Raising taxes in the midst of a recession would be a disaster for our economy. And anybody who proposes such a policy really is, I think, unfit to be making decisions.

BLITZER: What if they just raised taxes on the richest, those making more than 250,000 dollars a year?

PAUL: Well, the thing is, we’re all interconnected. There are no rich. There are no middle class. There are no poor. We all are interconnected in the economy. You remember a few years ago, when they tried to tax the yachts, that didn’t work. You know who lost their jobs? The people making the boats, the guys making 50,000 and 60,000 dollars a year lost their jobs. We all either work for rich people or we sell stuff to rich people. So just punishing rich people is as bad for the economy as punishing anyone. Let’s not punish anyone. Let’s keep taxes low and let’s cut spending.

Read the full article at Think Progress.

Hey, Kentucky, swell job in electing this Rand-style sociopath.

DSCC AD: Millionaire Pat Toomey is Fighting for Jobs

......in China. Yes, Mr. Toomey believes in free market ideas such as NAFTA, and outsourcing jobs to China.

Not surprising considering who he is. Toomey is not only a former investment banker, he is the former president of the Club for Growth, a super PAC which has been accused of driving all the moderates out of the GOP, and which has been spending millions to defeat RINOs and Democrats this year.

For information on Toomey's positions on the issues, click here.

US Chamber of Commerce Funded by Top Offshoring Companies

You would think that an entity that calls itself the “U.S. Chamber of Commerce” would care about jobs. American jobs. In America, of course.

You would be wrong [emphasis mine].

While it tells the American public it cares about American jobs, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce actually works to send jobs overseas on behalf of its corporate members, which include some of Asia’s top offshoring companies. Its secretly-funded $75 million political ad campaign attacks the “anti-jobs record” of Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Jerry Brown (D-CA), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Alexi Giannoulias (D-IL), Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV), and others.

As ThinkProgress previously noted, the Chamber has repeatedly sent out issue alerts attacking Democratic efforts to encourage businesses to hire locally rather than outsource to foreign counties. The Chamber has also bitterly fought Democrats for opposing unfettered free trade deals. The Chamber’s anti-American jobs agenda serves not only the profit-seeking of right-wing corporate executives in the United States, but also works to send jobs overseas to the following outsourcing companies, who are some of the dozens of foreign corporations that pay member dues to the Chamber of Commerce’s 501c(6) account, which is used to fund its political ads:

Could any group be less pro-American than one who sends our jobs overseas and penalizes those who work to keep jobs on our own soil? Not in my opinion.

New DNC Ad Targets John Boehner

This new DNC ad makes it clear that John Boehner's economic plan includes shipping our jobs overseas via tax cuts for big business.

The National GOP Trust PAC Releases the Most Despicable Money-Grubbing Political Ad Ever

Via Bob Cesca, this piece of trash ad contains barely a grain of truth in it, and that grain is confined to the fact that there actually is a "Ground Zero" Everything else is a lie or a distortion, put out by the National GOP Trust PAC . Those who created and released this ad are the most despicable kind of human beings on the planet, and that is not hyberbole. Using images of someone's loved one falling to his death on 9/11 for political purposes is nothing less than craven.

Please re-post this video, let's send it viral.

And then, vote the damn Republicans down in November. This country can not take any more of these fascist pigs.

Adding... for the truth about how Americans really like their hallowed ground, check out Cesca's article on HuffPost.

This bears repeating: unlike Park 51, which is blocks away, there's going to be a 55,000 square foot mall under the same ground where people fell to their deaths on that terrible day. Ground that's mixed with the remains of the dead. A mall.