October 19, 2012 - 11:27 pm
It’s a special Ayn Rand edition of PJTV’s Instavision. Harmon Kaslow, the producer of the film Atlas Shrugged, Part II, discusses the relevance of the Ayn Rand classic to the policies of President Obama. This novel is selling better now than when it was first released. Are job creators going to give up on the U.S. economy? Find out.
While you’re at it, read “Bonfire of the Vanities”.
That’ll explain a lot, too.
This is a must read.
The Blago File
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/blago-file_655072.html
This is going somewhere big!
Weekly Standard reviews Tribune reporters’ book on Blago
http://illinoispaytoplay.com/2012/10/20/weekly-standard-reviews-tribune-reporters-book-on-blago/
All I know is that there are 5 small businesses that my family does business with that are going “out of business.”
There are many, many reasons while small businesses fail, and there are also factors that cause small businesses to close up and go out of business. For three of them, it is DIRECTLY tied to the pending tax rate increases.
Another one it was not the tax increases as much as it was new regulations that were passed by both Congress and the state legislatures that made it prohibitive to remain in business.
Two had been in business for multiple generations, and had weathered many economic conditions over the years.
But when it “costs” more to remain in business, than what a business makes… well, there goes the business, and all that went with it. More than shuttering a store front. And this in a region relatively exempted from the recession/depression going on.
The Climate Policy Network Climate Was Warmer 1000 and 2000 Years Ago
http://us4.campaign-archive1.com/?u=c920274f2a364603849bbb505&id=6946bd70cb&e=f4e33fdd1e
Like most things Washington related, the rules have been ignored. Is it too much to ask for a topical, relevant thought? Please post your spam (even though I’m sympathetic) elsewhere.
Many small businesses are very marginal and when the economy is weak, and especially when it stays weak for year after year, they fold, a lot of little vanity businesses that are barely more than hobbies fall into that category. Then there is the macro-trend of outsourcing manufacturing, that continues, although it’s very nearly 100% done now. While the economy is weak, entrepreneurs simply wait for better times. Established businesses close down weak divisions, and have no reason to expand strong ones while demand stays weak. Banks are now tighter with credit than they have been in a generation, so it takes more time to accumulate the capital to start a new business, and when it does start, it tends to start smaller.
Add the Obamanation idiocies on *top* of all that, and yeah, we’ve got a problem.
I want to puke when Obama starts with his “millionaires and billionaires” bit, and I *also* want to puke when conservatives start going on about “the rich as job creators”. Now, it’s probably true that most job creators are richer than most non-job creators, whatever that phrase even means, but there is a HUGE problem today in the US with wealth distribution and pay rates, ridiculous pay for the executive suite and then all the jobs sent offshore, and the few remaining US jobs dramatically underpaid. OK, I’m probably projecting a bit from the STEM jobs situation where this is CERTAINLY true, but the private enterprise middle class in this country, is a fraction of what it was a generation ago. And we’re not all that happy about the public employee middle class, are we. So where does that leave things? Well, it’s complicated.
If you ask yourself why job creators want to ship jobs overseas, you’re at the beginning of understanding. Why is doing business more attractive overseas?
Always thinking China, the first two reasons are ridiculously cheaper labor, and that you can bribe your way out of anything.
Then come various pluses and minuses. If you think dealing with the Chinese bureaucrats is seriously easier than dealing with US agencies, think again.
I’ll give it a shot about why business is shipped overseas or across the border: For profit. When the business doesn’t have to pay minimum wage, pays no benefits, adhere to faux regulations by paying “no lookee here” bribes, pays a reduced business taxes abroad by paying “no lookee here at profit” bribes, does not have to pay survivor benefits to the suicide’s familes, pays “no lookee here bribe for advance knowledge of “human rights inspection tours” yet does not lower prices paid by USA consumers in order to keep CEO pay 445 times what the worker receives are all valid reasons for a business to move over seas.
Atlas is not shrugging yet, but is warmed up to start doing so in a couple of weeks.
I live in a small town in Colorado, and know a lot of the local business people. My mechanic, who has had his shop for 25 years; growing from just himself to employing 8 people told me a couple of days ago that if Obama wins, which means Obamacare will be implemented, he will shut down because it will put him out of business. He is a Subchapter “S” corporation, and he therefore is a Kulak [my word not his]. Pretty much everyone I know in town who is a Subchapter “S” corporation is looking at shutting down. Bad times they will try to ride out. Being an enemy of the state [once again, my description, theirs being far more profane] is another thing entirely. The main exception are those businesses run by Leftists, who are not in contact with reality anyway. If Obama is re-elected, at least I can take some pleasure in watching them go belly-up.
Look for a lot of black market sales and services. It will become the patriotic alternative.
Medical care has already been effected. The day after it passed, the doctors in my county started meeting. Short form, some stopped taking Medicare. A couple stopped taking insurance altogether and actually aren’t doing too badly. Pretty much all have stopped taking new patients over 35; reasoning that they will be retired before the patients are on Medicare which is already a money loser that they were carrying on their backs.
Romney was not my first, second, or third choice, but I will crawl over ground glass to vote for him. He does not hate this country and its people the way Obama does; and I can’t see him issuing a “Directive 10-289″.
Subotai Bahadur
A quarter of a mile over ground glass! Maybe a 1/2 mile if the weather is cold.
My colonoscopy guy (everyone over 40 should have one every four years, by the way) stopped taking insurance of any kind two years ago. Cash on the barrel, baby!
I’m not crawling over ground glass, but I’d slide down a pine tree naked into a pool of turpentine.
strangely enough…
he made perfect sense in 2008. mccain was that bad.
early on in 2012, I’m thinking, please, ‘god’ of atheists, ‘not him’.
maybe it was the debate, but now I understand, and embrace him. despite what obama would have one believe, we are now in far more dire economic straits than 2008.
…malaise you could scoop with cardboard.
Yeah, McCain was bad – not not as bad as Obama, even in 2008. Some of us could see that very clearly. Look at this man’s history – the positions he’s taken. Think about what he said even in 2008 about how he was frustrated that the constitution did’t allow him to ‘do enough’ and how he was for ‘redistribution’. Where we are at this moment was *predictable*.
Yep, you cant wash away the fact that McCain was a P.O.S and to this day I can’t understand how he wrested the nomination from any of the alternative guys. Are there really that many Stupid R party members ?Hmm, That sounds rhetorical sadly. R/R 2012,Broken Glass optional.
I’ll take a shot on how McCain was given the nomination. Remember Rush’s operation chaos. The democrats simply reversed it, easily done in the pinko states with open primaries, no voter id, same day registration with no voter Id, mail in absentee voting counted by dem operatives. ACORN, SEIU and the democratic machines were stronger then than they are today, however, early voting has already started and the rest homes, the obamaphone ladies, the graveyards, and a million or so illegals have already received their $6 per card and their votes tallied.
McCain was NOT that bad compared to Obama. People CHOSE to overlook his religion, friends, lack of experience, etc. It never was a secret. And how a real adult could not tell this guy was an empty suit from day 1 is something I will never understand. McCain wouldn’t have been my first choice, but compared to what we got, I would have taken him any day……any day. The one we got has no moral compass or integrity, and he never will. I despise him.
In 2008, McCain was a sh*t sandwich. Obama was a sh*t sandwich with arsenic sprinkles.
..ummmmm..put me down for the ground or broken glass (your option), a full mile, in Death Valley heat with a parka or naked in Arctic Winter, and I’ll take a gasoline suit carrying a crate of nitroglycerine walking through Hell on the side, please.
Who was your FIRS choice? Mine was Fred Thompson!
Ha–I’ve been saying I’d crawl over broken glass mixed with hot coals to vote for Romney for quite awhile now.
I’d crawl over a mile over broken glass in the hot desert with my entrails strung out behind covered in honey and staked to an ant hill just to see that Obama is not reelected. If that means Mitt Romney will win…then so be it.
Funny enough I was playing basketball with a very liberal friend of mine and he asked me if I was going to vote. He was pretty taken aback when I told him the same thing: I’d crawl over crushed glass to vote against Obama. As a small business owner, I can tell from miles away when someone fundamentally doesn’t “get” the principle of freedom – economic or otherwise.
Crawl over broken glass and show ID if I have to!
Being deep in enemy territory here (downstate NY), I see little enthusiasm around me about either candidate, except for the permanent underclass, who seem to be chomping at the bit to re-elect their living god, who needs more time and more power to undo all the damage “Bush caused.” That’s the story here. I’m worried. If it could be proven/demonstrated that my death (by some magic) could put Romney/Ryan over the top, I’d die satisfied.
“Look for a lot of black market sales and services. It will become the patriotic alternative.”
I agree. My second house was on a cul-de-sac and my neighbor across the circle always had a line of cars taking up all the space. Strangely enough, most of them were all Saabs. After a few weeks I figured out he was running an illegal car repair shop out of his garage. I found it annoying, but didn’t care enough to do anything like complain to city about it. Well, they went on vacation and the cul-de-sac was empty for the first time in months. What a nightmare. Kids everywhere, all the time. Loud kids. All the time. I couldn’t wait for my neighbors to come home so I’d get my quiet street back. I loved seeing those Saabs.
We’re Americans. We’ll figure it out no matter what they do.
I think that’s broken glass. Ground glass goes in telescopes.
While taxes hurt our national competitiveness, and they “feed the beast” that is the nanny-state leviathan, the reason the economy can’t get out of this recession is not primarily due to taxes. During the recent boom decades, profits were high and we did not notice the opportunity costs associated with rapidly expanding regulations from the extra-constitutional legislative authority that resides in the federal agencies. I’m not talking about banking and stock market regulations, but the kind of nit-picking health, safety, and environmental regulations that recently forced a local bar to shut down after three generations because its historic counters were 1/2 inch too high to meet ADA rules. WIth regs like that in abundance, and constantly changing faster and faster, try to imagine the hurdles a young, small to mid-size business must overcome to embark on an aggressive expansion plan. This is a regulation-driven recession.
We can’t recover because, to put it simply, we are not allowed to recover.
You are absolutely right. People usually don’t understand how destructive bureaucracy can be. This is our “new class” that destroys our lives like rodents destroy harvested corn.
Well, ADA was signed into law by George HW Bush who was carrying on the tradition of his mentor, Richard Nixon who signed laws creating EPA and OSHA. I guess that’s why George the shrub had to sign the unfunded bill for Medicare prescriptions. What’s a conservative gonna do when led by RINOS? And, by the way, what the hell have the Republican Representatives and Senators done to curtail the bs put out by these agencies? Huh, where the hell are McConnell and Bumher or any of the others with more than 4 yrs in Congress. Scumbags all.
The broken/ground glass reference started with Rush in the (I think) ’98 midterms. He and Rove predicted that Republican gains were a certainty because they were so repulsed by Clinton they would crawl over broken glass to get him out. They didn’t because they didn’t. They got clobbered. It’s going to be who shows up this time. If you really want Obama out just make sure you show up.
Interesting comments. Yesterday, I went to the county building to vote early (for Romney, natch!). In the few minutes I’d needed to perform my civic duty, upwards of 10 other folks also came to do the same. I’ll wager a case of Leinenkugel’s Red Lager than nearly all of them also voted for The Mittster.
I should further note that the vast majority of visible Democrat yard signs in this area of Indiana are for local- or state-level candidates. Very few Obama signs and, frankly, not all that many Romney signs either. I suspect this stems from the fact that many disgruntled Democrats don’t want to advertise they’ll be splitting tickets and voting for Romney. Conversely, I reckon many Repubs aren’t displaying Romney signs/stickers merely to avoid the possibility of theft or vandalism by Obamite nutjobs.
Fearless Prediction: Indiana turns bright red next month. GOP retains the governorship as well as Dick Lugar’s senate seat. Significant gains at the state and local levels as well. Our state rep for this area, a Democrat, who’s been around for decades, may finally be retired this time around. Guess we’ll see!
Regarding yard signs, you may not be seeing many because you live in a “safe red” state. I live next door in “safe blue” Illinois. I went to the local Republican HQ a few weeks ago, and the lady there told me that the Romney campaign is not sending a lot of materials (bumper stickers, yard signs, etc.) to “deep blue or deep red” states. She told me to drive over to Iowa because both campaigns are flooding the state with all forms of advertising.
We’re seeing the same thing in Connecticut. Lots of state and congressional race signs, but the (R)s, understandably, don’t want to spend a lot on a state that is this stupidly blue on national level races. Interestingly though, I’ve only seen two Ø yard signs, and I think one of them may have been a 2008 leftover. I’ve also only seen one or two Ø bumpter stickers, and I drive about 15 miles to work, most of it highway driving.
The reason for so few R/R bumper stickers is probably that you do indeed have to worry about some nutjob keying your car.
Dont get cocky, kid.
I heard the same stuff in 2000.
People who voted for Perot in 1992 and were contemptuous of Bush I were ready to “crawl on broken glass” to put his son in office.
Why?
People take things for granted. We had Reagan for eight years and Bush for four more. Then we got lazy and sloppy. We felt that we were entitled to the freedoms they gave us. We forget that not only can our freedoms be taken away but that we can stop being worthy of them.
We did the same thing after eight years of Bush II. There were a lot of things about his administration that I didn’t like but he did accomplish many things.
When the Supreme Court ruled in the favor of ObamaCare, I was disappointed.
But not too much. We brought that upon ourselves and if we are to get rid of it, we need to earn it.
Name me one thing that the shrub accomplished. 1.
In slightly blue NE Ohio I see plenty of signs for local elections. A handful of Josh Mandel signs, nothing for Sherrod Brown. I see very few Obama signs outside of black neighborhoods. People are subdued. Interpretation: Romney will win OH because Democrats will stay home or vote for him. They are just too embarrassed to go public. The black vote will fall. Obama’s share of the black vote will fall. I put little faith in polls at the moment. We are in an environment like 1936 where the Literary Digest poll predicted a landslide for Alf Landon.
I live in Mansfield — where Sharrod Brown is from (how I despise that troll!) — and work in N.Canton. I, likewise, have seen few pro-Obama signs, in either place.
I work at a large state university in Ohio. A woman I work with told me that she has never voted for a Republican for President in her life. Said there is “No way in hell am I voting for that [crude, vulgar two-word expletive vividly describing a man who engages in coitus with his mother] again”
That from a woman I’ve never heard say “damn”.
They made a movie about it, and they still don’t get it–which is why the film stinks.
I would recommend that most, if not all, of the people commenting on _Atlas Shrugged_ actually read the damned novel. The theme—the role of the mind in Man’s existence—has a corollary: the demonstration of a new moral philosophy, the morality of rational egoism.
Every major event that happens in AS—from the psychological enslavement of a great tycoon by a mother, brother & wife who both hate & envy him, to the disintegration of art & music, to the obliteration of great centers of learning, to the rise of corrupt businessmen, to the destruction of great industries, to the elevation of thugs in politics, to the collapse of a nation—all derives from the ethics of self-immolation, the old morality of suicide: the 2,000 year old Judeo-Christian creed of self-sacrifice.
This is the morality of both the Democrats & the Republicans. It is—oh, by the way—also the same morality of the Islamic killers who took down the WTC. And—alert the media—the foundation for Islamic jihad theocratic ideology: the Koran. It is also the dominant morality of the West and has been for over 2,000 years and began with Plato:
“The best ordered state will be one in which the largest number of persons … most nearly resembles a single person. The first and highest form of the State … is a condition in which the private and the individual is altogether banished from life …” (Plato’s _Republic_ & _Laws_ c. 370 BCE)
The only ethics compatible with Plato’s best-ordered state–though Plato never formulated it–is that of self-sacrifice (self-abnegation; self-defilement; selflessness, i.e., self-destruction), which is precisely what the West adopted:
“No one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or will follow the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and ego.” (Matthew 6:24)
Many centuries later, such a state–really the first of its kind in human history–was created. Here is the ethics that was the foundation of that state:
“It is thus necessary that the individual should finally come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of his nation; that the position of the individual ego is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole … that above all the unity of a nation’s spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual….
“This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the community, is really the first premise for every truly human culture…. The basic attitude from which such activity arises, we call-to distinguish it from egoism and selfishness-idealism. By this we understand only the individual’s capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow men” (Adolf Hitler, 1933; explaining the moral philosophy of Nazism).
Imagine that.
In terms of solutions, turning to the Republicans is like asking the Fascists for help against the Nazis—or the Maoists for help against the Marxists. As a friend of mine succinctly put it in his blog: “To oppose the Democrats’ calls for sacrifice, they (the Republicans) hold up the image of Jesus dying on the cross for our sins. That is not a refutation, it is an exclamation point….”
As for the libertarians, capital “L” or otherwise, they have no ethical philosophy save the Objectivist political principle, which they mimic as a mantra whenever & wherever discussions of ethics arises. Anarchy is not a solution. It’s an epitaph.
Finally, if all anyone “gets” out of AS was that government causes problems, which it then exacerbates with solutions that later make such problems worse, causing a bunch of guys to go on strike, it’s no wonder some think of the novel as a comic book and its heroes unworthy of emulation.
Well, do you feel better? Personally when I first read AS many many moons ago, I thought it was excellent fiction, telling a damn good story with protagonists and antagonists and having machines that kill with sound and a magic metal that trains could roll on a stupendous speeds. Wow, right up there with Tolkien and Heinlein.
Little did I know AS was really book of non-fiction. I mean, how could she have known about the looters, the sycophants and the sheeple? Amazing
Just saw Atlas Shrugged Pt. 2…Rand predicted EXACTLY what has been going on for the past four years and more importantly, what is going to happen to us if we re-elect the Marxist currently in the White House. Vilification of the wealthy, class division, government takeover of business and industry, high gas prices, a “fair share” for everyone (sound familiar?) Nothing less than amazing that Ayn Rand could see this all in 1957!
INVESTING | 10/18/2012 Who’s Afraid Of The Fiscal Cliff? Harry Dent, Contributor
http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2012/10/18/whos-afraid-of-the-fiscal-cliff/