Monthly Archives: March 2009

Hollywood Goes Galt: Your Vote for Dagny Taggart

julia_robertsAngelina Jolie, Charlize Theron, Julia Roberts or Anne Hathaway?

Here’s the background from The Hollywood Reporter:

Hollywood could soon be going Objectivist.

After decades in development hell, Ayn Rand’s capitalism-minded “Atlas Shrugged” is taking new steps toward the big screen — with one of the film world’s most prominent money men potentially at its center.

Ryan Kavanaugh’s Relativity Media is circling the Baldwin Entertainment project and could come aboard to finance with Lionsgate, which got involved several years ago.

Rand’s popular but polarizing book — it’s derided by many literary critics but has a huge public following — tells the story of Dagny Taggart, a railroad executive trying to keep her corporation competitive in the face of what she perceives as a lack of innovation and individual responsibility.

A number of stars have expressed serious interest in playing the lead role of Taggart. Angelina Jolie previously had been reported as a candidate to play the strong female lead, but the list is growing and now includes Charlize Theron, Julia Roberts and Anne Hathaway.

Although it was written a half-century ago, producers say that the book’s themes of individualism resonate in the era of Obama, government bailouts and stimulus packages — making this the perfect time to bring the 1,100-page novel to the big screen.

“This couldn’t be more timely,” said Karen Baldwin, who along with husband Howard is producing, with film industry consultant John Logigian advising on the project. “It’s uncanny what Rand was able to predict — about the only things she didn’t anticipate are cell phones and the Internet.”

Not that I’d kick any of them from my private little Tea Party, but I think Julia Roberts may play the role the best.  I love Jolie, but she may a bit too glamorous.  I always pictured Dagny as attractive, well-spoken, but very practical.  Sexy at times, common sense at others, bright and hard working always.  This seems to describe Roberts to a T.  I snagged this photo from Best Google Images, as I can picture Dagny looking like this (at the rare moment when her sleeves aren’t all rolled up) while hanging around for a while in Galt’s Gulch.

Obama confesses to treason and resigns, co-conspirators are in custody, Hillary Clinton sworn in as president…

…is how this headline reads.  Here are a few of the sordid details:

Washington, D.C., April 1 — U.S. President Barack Obama has resigned after confessing to treason. Obama named his co-conspirators and the FBI has taken all but one into custody in undisclosed locations.

Obama told FBI investigators that his primary co-conspirators were Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. He revealed that they have spent the last 40 years devising a master plan for collapsing the U.S. economy by overwhelming it with taxes, debt and new spending programs. Obama also named as a primary co-conspirator billionaire investor George Soros, and said that it was market manipulations by Soros that began the financial meltdown in September when Obama was trailing the McCain-Palin ticket in the polls.

So far Obama has refused to name his al Quaeda handlers, who communicated with him through the Blackberry PDA he insisted on keeping after becoming president despite warnings that no such device can be kept secure.

Obama also named as co-conspirators Vice President Joseph Biden (first in line of succession to the presidency); House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (second in line of succession to the presidency); Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid; Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd; Senator Robert Byrd (who is also the Senate president pro tempore and third in line of succession to the presidency); House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank; Senior Advisor David Axelrod; his former chief campaign manager, David Plouffe; and his White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel. Emanuel has disappeared and is thought to have escaped to Israel disguised as a Chasidic woman.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is fourth in the order of succession to the presidency. She was sworn in as the first woman president of the United States by Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts in a small private ceremony in the FBI Building in Washington, D.C., at 7 am this morning. Her husband, former president Bill Clinton, and daughter Chelsea Clinton, witnessed the ceremony along with all the other members of the Supreme Court and a camera crew from C-SPAN.

Of course, it’s April Fools Day, and a newly conservative lesbian thought she’d get her April Fool’s posting in just before midnight.

There are other fools out there, too, but in this case, the joke isn’t nearly as funny.  While at a meeting tonight, I heard that Obama has been indicted by a grand jury in Stockbridge, GA.  I called a local friend (who writes on this blog from time to time) to get the scoop.  It turned out to be yet another trip out into Birther fantasy land.

When Did Maricopa County Become Red Square?

This seems even excessive for the Toughest Most Authoritarian Sheriff in America, Joe Arpaio:

Sheriff’s deputies and county Protective Service officers arrested two men and two women in the middle of the [County Board of Supervisors] meeting when they stood and applauded a speaker who criticized Arpaio.

Joel Nelson, Jason Odhner, Monica Sanschafer and Kristy Theilen all were charged with suspicion of disorderly conduct and trespassing, said sheriff’s office spokesman Lt. Brian Lee.

Odhner is a member of the anti-Arpaio group Maricopa Citizens for Safety and Accountability, said the group’s director Raquel Terán. Nelson, Sanschafer and Theilen are members of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. The trio frequently has participated with MCSA members during the group’s anti-Arpaio campaign.

The crackdown brought the anti-Arpaio activist arrest tally to nine in the past four months.

Here’s the video of the incident:

But perhaps the disorderly conduct charges are legit. After all, public meetings have to have order right?

One might be able to accept this explanation until considering this:

A double standard clearly was in effect during the Board of Supervisors meeting Wednesday. At one point, public-transit advocate Blue Crowley used part of his public-comment time allotment to sing a birthday song to Kunasek. Kunasek blushed and several people applauded, but none was ordered to leave or threatened with arrest.

However, Kunasek, deputies and security officers refused to tolerate applause after the anti-Arpaio speech minutes later.

Don’t expect any apologies from Sheriff Arpaio for the actions of his deputies. He is THE LAW!

Obama Encourages Corporate Malfeasance

The trainwreck that is the Obama administration continues with his support for caps on executive pay. This bad idea has been tried before, and had the disastrous result of enhancing the power corporations wield over their employees, particularly with upper and middle management. It contributed to many of the instances of corporate malfeasance.

The problem is that the Obama administration is attempting to cap executive compensations at below market rates. Whenever the government does this, people come up with alternate forms of compensation to offer in lieu of the salaries or bonuses that are now illegal. A company may, instead of paying its management a high salary, offer them a lower one and buy them a house. It will buy them health club memberships, or give them no-cost vacations at company-owned resorts. The end result? People who don’t own their homes, but are dependent on their employers for their housing, their memberships, or even their kids’ schooling.

Many corporate scandals progress until someone is brave enough to blow the whistle. When blowing the whistle merely only the loss of a paycheck, people are still reluctant to do it.  A loss of a paycheck and the loss of one’s home, one’s social circle, access to the kids’ schools etc, and the incentive to turn a blind eye to criminal behavior, or even to participate in it is heightened.

One would think that one of the major lessons of the current meltdown would be do decentralize economic power by reducing the competitive advantage handed by the regulatory environment to large, hide-bound companies. Instead, the Obama administration is attempting to tilt the playing field further in their favor. Assuming that he is sincere in attempting to curb malfeasance and dereliction of duty amongs corporate officers, this bill is definitely an own goal.

I thought it would be many decades before we saw an administration as incompetent as that of George Bush. I was wrong; it took no time at all to get one that was even more incompetent.

I am an anarcho-capitalist living just west of Boston Massachussetts. I am married, have two children, and am trying to start my own computer consulting company.

Great Idea from the Left: Have Candidates Sign Pledges to Increase Taxes and Spending

pledgeWhile trashing a positive review of a Republican candidate I just wrote over at The Next Right, the good folks over at The American Prospect inadvertently came up with a good idea.  I was describing a recent conversation with Tim James, who is running for governor in Alabama:

When I had the opportunity, I asked James if I could ask him a quick question.  “Sure,” he replied.  The question I lobbed at him was whether or not he would absolutely commit to not increasing taxes if elected governor.

“No problem,” he responded.  “Got a tougher one?”

I pitched the second question a bit harder, but his response came as quickly as the first one.  I asked if he’d commit to not increasing state spending.  “That’s easy,” he said. “You got a tough one for me, now?”

“Okay,” I responded, and threw him a bit of a curveball.  “Would you mind signing a pledge to this effect?”

“I’d love to…,” he stated. Later on, we set up a telephone call to deal with speaking arrangements for an upcoming event and the pledge issue.

It all seems so flippant. Even given the conservative predilection for smaller governments and the ubiquity of Grover Norquist'[s] conservative loyalty oaths, is it wise for any potential chief executive to completely tie their hands, especially in a time of recession? It speaks to a rigid ideological prism rather than the attitude of addressing problems on their own merits.

Now here’s where the awesome idea comes from (emphasis added):

Most of America’s successful conservative executives would have violated both of those pledges; it’s as foolish a set of strictures as if Democrats demanded that their candidates sign pledges to raise taxes and increase spending.

The idea isn’t as foolish as Fernholz suggests.  According to the Americans for Tax Reform website, “The idea of the Pledge is simple enough: Make them put their no-new-taxes rhetoric in writing.”  For the sake of simple honesty, I’d love to see candidates running on tax-and-spending-increase rhetoric.

If today’s Democrats (along with Republicans such as Senators Snowe, Collins and Specter) wish to outspend even the Republicans on corporate bailouts and stimulate the economy with trillions of dollars we don’t have, why not at least be honest about it?  Here’s an applicable rewrite of Grover Norquist’s gubernatorial pledge for candidates running on a big-government platform:

I, ____, pledge to the taxpayers of the State of ________, that I will support and sign any and all efforts to increase taxes.

I also like the Republican Liberty Caucus pledge.  Here’s the new Slavery Compact:

Decrease liberty, not promote it; expand government, not shrink it; increase taxes, don’t cut them; create programs, not abolish them; despoil the freedom and independence of citizens, increasing the interference of government in their lives; and absolutely disregard the limited, enumerated powers of our Constitution, not promote them.

If politicians are going to legislate and govern expansive and ever expanding government programs, it sure would be nice to see some honesty in advertising as they run for public office.

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