Daily Archives: April 21, 2017

Peopled by larger-than-life heroes and villains, charged with towering questions of good and evil,Atlas Shruggedis Ayn Rands magnum opus: a philosophical revolution told in the form of an action thriller.

Who is John Galt? When he says that he will stop the motor of the world, is he a destroyer or a liberator?Why does he have to fight his battles not against his enemies but against those who need him most? Why does he fight his hardest battle against the woman he loves?

You will know the answer to these questions when you discover the reason behind the baffling events that play havoc with the lives of the amazing men and women in this book. You will discover why a productive genius becomes a worthless playboy...why a great steel industrialist is working for his own destruction...why a composer gives up his career on the night of his triumph...why a beautiful woman who runs a transcontinental railroad falls in love with the man she has sworn to kill.

Atlas Shrugged, a modern classic and Rands most extensive statement ofObjectivismher groundbreaking philosophyoffers the reader the spectacle of human greatness, depicted with all the poetry and power of one of the twentieth centurys leading artists.

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Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand - Google Books

Editorial Board | Published 2 hours ago

Another Republican state house, anotherbill scoring cheap political points by crying foul against liberal professors. At least this one does not even feign policy knowledge or responsibility.

A bill introduced in the GeneralAssembly calls for the Board of Governors to ensure that the experiences of students in the entire UNC system achieve ideological balance. Okay, Einstein, barring the fact that this kicks the responsibility completely to the BOGwithout a single recommendation of how to achieve that, you do not even define your terms. Which ideologies would you like to be in balance? What is your definition of ideology? What are the grounds for complaint or harm if a student feels that ideologies are not in balance?These technicalities are of course all beside the point.

Basically this public servant feels their public should never have their kids exposed to one page of The Communist Manifesto without an equal number of pages assigned from Atlas Shrugged. This bill operates on the premise that all ideologies (in this particular case, probably summarized in the philosophical position me ornot me) have had equally influential weight and historical durability. Take that premise away and Marx and Rand, for better and worse, are not even close. But lets entertain this idiocy for a moment.

Hey sir, against the capitalist arguments of von Mises, Smith and Friedman, we can put the arguments of that guy whose death was just celebrated onGood Friday. You know, the one who said it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get to heaven. And that ideology by all accounts should, if Western Civ is re-required, be the honking concert speaker to your puny Beats headphones advocating free markets.

You do it to yourself, just you, and thats why it really hurts (sang Thom Yorke). Rand herself in Atlas Shrugged warned capitalists that they gave up philosophy at their peril. The real thinkers, even to her, always win the hearts and minds, if not the money, of the people. Money is always vulnerable to taking. Hearts and minds less so.

We do not deny the vitality of conservative thinkers. We celebrate the best of them. We in fact need more of them to counter the endless lame self-congratulatory political ranting of the worst leftist (and too often hostile) professors and TAs.

And here is where the balance comes in. We are not infants. We get the bias, and it is most certainly there. We, as Tar Heels, would not be here if we could not think through it.

Hey, conservatives: You want to set the terms of the debate? Get in the ring. Instead of hustling off to a B-school job, or a Republican political consultancy or appealing to know-nothing GA members, live on student loans and ramen for the time it takes to get a PhD and have your way with us dopey snowflakes. Invite socialists to talk at the B-school. Get into student policy positions where you can stop idiot professors saying that they are almost all liberal, but conservative students are welcome for their interesting views.

Civil democracy in this town, county, stateand nation depends on each side keeping the other honest. UNC needs more organically grown conservatives, not idiots without qualifications and learning forced on us. We welcome all comers.

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A bill that balances ideologies? Balance this! - The Daily Tar Heel

There is a new book in the White House and it was written by a Russian born woman. Her book expresses the philosophy of rugged, uncompromising individualism, the fear of an overbearing government and a conformist world in the corporate boardroom. The book now has a follower in the White House and many places of power.

Who was this Russian woman, she is Ayn Rand, born in 1905 in St Petersburg, Russia, who saw her family impoverished and driven to the edge of starvation by the Soviets, an experience that forged her contempt for all flavors of socialism. She left Russia in 1926 and immigrated to America.

Her first successful book was the Fountainhead published in 1943, which tells the storyof Howard Roark, a brilliant and dedicated architect who destroyed one of his own buildings rather than allow his designs to be modified for some nebulous collective good. Then, in 1957, came Atlas Shrugged, the story revolves aroundJohn Galt, an inventor and capitalist genius, who leads a walk out of the people who actually made the country run, leaving the hangers-ons to struggle to survive.

In those novels and in the lectures that followed she explained her philosophy called Objectivism. It described a belief that man exists for his or her own sake, that the pursuit of happiness is the highest moral purpose, that we must not be forced to sacrifice for others. Her books described a country dying from over regulation and too much government control. One that had so many corporate sycophants that they slowed the wheels of innovation and in fact stopped progress. The world began to decay while the government and corporate fat cats continued to dance the night way.

Her work appealed to a reader who was young and searching for an ideology that presented a high ground for dreaming of and then becoming successful. One of her most early follower was Alan Greenspan who was later appointed by President Reagan to serve as chair of the US Federal Reserve. He was one of the architects of the Reagan free-market philosophy a bulwarks of American capitalism.

Now a new group of champions for Rands philosophy has arisen starting with Trump himself who named the Fountainhead as one of his favorite books. Along with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and CIA director Mike Pompeo have named her works among the most influential in their lives.

So why does this group claim to be inspired by her? The answer is that Rand shapes her hero as the people of action who get things done. She makes heroes out of entrepreneurs, people who shape the future by relying on their own instincts, intuition, knowledge andsurrounding themselves with like-minded people.

However, there is a difference here, a transformation from the idea of all for themselves, to one of service for their country. These very successful people are giving up a life of billionaires to try to reform our country. This is far different from those who become rich and then build a bubble around themselves and their friends. These new heroes, who are working to save our country, have seen the opportunities that helped them become rich and successful; being destroyed the pass administrations vision of re-distributing wealth created by our workers and giving it to other countries and people living here who contribute nothing.

Therefore, some of our best and most successful have stood up and said no more. Their intent is to roll back government and give the free market a chance to provide jobs and wealth to those who want to work for it. For those that just want to be supported by those who are working, things are about to change. No one will starve, but big screen TVs and cars are something they might just have to work for to enjoy. A new world where farmers dont have to worry about the EPA declaring a seasonal stream a national waterway, a world where proposed new rules are carefully examined to make sure they make sense.

In her book Atlas Shrugged Rand described a world where the finest and most creative people pulled out and setup their own enclave and allowed society to collapse , but today we have those same people she described as heroes standing up and working to re-establishing what made America great. They are enduring great personal criticism, yet working long and hard to return to us and our children the opportunities for success, we need to thank them greatly for their sacrifice and hope they can turn the tide so Rands prediction of our society being devoured by the demands of socialism never occurs.

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Ayn Rand - Mesquite Local News

Sacramento

Under the leadership of Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative Democrats, the state government has increased its spending a dramatic $36 billion over the last six years, but never managed to put any additional funding into transportation and infrastructure unless one considers the billions its spending to build a high-speed rail boondoggle.

Yet during recent legislative proceedings, one would think the state budget is stretched so thin that there just isnt any cash left to rebuild its crumbling infrastructure of freeways, streets, and bridges without a tax hike. So the state passed a massive one 12 cents a gallon for gasoline, 20 cents a gallon for diesel, and new fees for the registration of vehicles. (Never mind that a lot of the new spending goes to transit and bike lanes.)

There was no effort whatsoever to reform the California Department of Transportation. According to the nonpartisan Legislative Analysts Office, Caltrans has 3,500 excess employees who have little to do other than collect their big paychecks and amass large pensions. California spends far more on administrative costs per road mile built than other states, yet instead of outsourcing more of the work, legislators are proposing bills to slash what little outsourcing already takes place.

Yet national Democrats and California columnists continue to point to our state as an example of the way Democratic officials get things done. Yes, they are good at passing tax increases and providing generous salaries and benefits for the people employed by government. But our pothole-pocked and inadequate freeways and creaky system of dams and levees is starting to remind one of the final scene from Ayn Rands Atlas Shrugged.

Before anyone elsewhere in the country starts buying the idea that California is decently managed, they ought to pay attention to some statistics that Orange County Sen. John Moorlach, a well-respected fiscal watchdog who predicted the Orange County bankruptcy, detailed in a speech this week to the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association in Sacramento.

Chief Executive magazine named California the worst state to do business for a stunning 12th year in a row. California has the highest sales taxes, corporate taxes, developer fees, and gas taxes in the nation. Californias top income tax rates of nearly 14 percent are by far the most punitive in America, which explains why millionaires keep heading elsewhere.

The progressive nature of our tax system 17 percent of the population pays 87 percent of income taxes assures that every new government program is basically free for most people, creating constant pressure for more social spending. Approximately 80 percent of transportation and road spending is outsourced in Arizona, where the roads are expansive and beautifully maintained. In California, its only 10 percent.

As Moorlach pointed out, California spends more than a half-million dollars per mile to build roads, which is the fifth highest in the nation and we have the fifth-worst road conditions in the country. Our unfunded pension liabilities are by far the worst in America, and even adjusted for population were near the bottom. California is edged out only by a handful of other mostly blue states such as Illinois, New Jersey, and Hawaii. In Los Angeles, public employee pension and health-care payments gobble up 20 percent of the citys budget. In San Jose, that number is close to 28 percent. Most other big cities are in the 15 percent to 20 percent range.

During the Brown administration, the states unrestricted net position i.e., its debts and liabilities has soared to nearly $250 billion thanks to the governors inaction and new rules that require a more forthright accounting of the states fiscal perils. Meanwhile, the senator noted, all of his bills to promote better transparency and other reforms of the pension system are dead on arrival in the Legislature, which pretends theres no problem at all.

As I argued in an op-ed after the massive gas-tax hike passed the Legislature (with the help of a Republican who was promised certain projects in his district), the gas tax in reality is a pension tax. For instance, the states pensions contributions are soon expected to top $11 billion a year, which is more than double the amount of annual transportation funding that will be raised by the 10-year permanent tax-increase plan.

The governor passed an exceedingly modest pension reform measure in 2012, which had done almost nothing to control pension costs given that it mostly applies to new hires. They wont start retiring for 25 or 30 years. Since then, pension reform hasnt even been on the legislative agenda. And the real reason for the passage of that little reform package was to help win the publics support for Browns last successful attempt to raise Californians taxes.

Meanwhile, some of the states older, more decrepit cities are in financial peril and continue to cut back on public services in order to pay their increasing tabs to the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS), which had returns on investment last year of less than 1 percent. Its expected rate of return was 7.5 percent, so each year the hole keeps getting bigger.

But the problems here have less to do with stock-market returns and more to do with Democratic priorities. The states leaders believe that Californians should always pay more taxes. They have no problem with typical six-figure salaries and pensions for government employees, who basically rule the Capitol with an iron fist. They dont care that California has unaffordable home prices due to their growth-control efforts or that the Census Bureau pins our poverty rate at a nations high level of 24 percent using their cost-of-living-based standard.

Republicans not only have virtually no power here, but their numbers are dwindling. Republican voters keep fleeing to other states. As I reported for the Spectator last week, Democrats are busy rigging the redistricting game to get rid of the few remaining GOP powerbases (some Central Valley and Southern California counties). We are indeed a one-party state, but forget about the common idea that things will get bad enough that voters will wake up.

Its not going to happen. California is still a long way from Greece. The fear isnt a big financial collapse, but the slow-motion erosion of our economy and infrastructure. People adapt to reality, and dont know any better. Pastoral oceanfront communities and trendy cities here will always remain magnets for wealthy trust-funders. Those of us who own homes and have families here might grumble about greener pastures, but most of us will stay put for a variety of reasons.

The gas-tax increase is just the latest reminder that unless some political paradigm shifts, California officials will never get the states debts under control, nor will they spend new money on the right priorities. Moorlach offered hope by pointing to Kentucky, where voters ousted large numbers of Democratic legislators in the Nov. 4 election. We all need hope, but the chances of such a thing happening in California seem more fleeting by the moment.

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Rewarding Public Employees With New Tax Hikes on the Private Sector - American Spectator