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A grim anniversary

Posted by Richard on March 24, 2011

One year ago today, ObamaCare became the law of the land. In the Wall Street Journal, freshman Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) offered a personal and moving op-ed piece about this abomination and the consequences if it's not repealed:

Today is the first anniversary of the greatest single assault on our freedom in my lifetime: the signing of ObamaCare. As we consider what this law may do to our country, I can't help but reflect on a medical miracle made possible by the American health-care system. It's one that holds special meaning for me.

Some years ago, a little girl was born with a serious heart defect: Her aorta and pulmonary artery were reversed. Without immediate intervention, she would not have survived.

The infant was rushed to another hospital where a surgeon performed a procedure at 1 a.m. that saved her life. Eight months later, when her heart was the size of a small plum, an incredibly dedicated and skilled team of medical professionals surgically reconstructed it. Twenty-seven years later, the young woman is now a nurse in a neonatal intensive care unit where she is studying to become a nurse practitioner.

She wasn't saved by a bureaucrat, and no government mandate forced her parents to purchase the coverage that saved her. Instead, her care was provided under a run-of-the-mill plan available to every employee of an Oshkosh, Wis., plastics plant.

If you haven't guessed, this story touches my heart because the girl is my daughter, Carey. …

Please go read the whole thing.

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US leads world in punitive tax rates

Posted by Richard on March 23, 2011

You know all that leftist carping about tax breaks for the rich and the rich not paying their share? As many of us have pointed out all along, it's bunkum. If they want the US to be more like Europe and the rest of the world, they could start by cutting taxes on the rich. According to the Tax Foundation, the richest 10% of households in the US pay more in taxes as a proportion of their share of income than in any other developed country (emphasis added):

The first column shows that the top 10 percent of households in the U.S. pays 45.1 percent of all income taxes (both personal income and payroll taxes combined) in the country.  Italy is the only other country in which the top 10 percent of households pays more than 40 percent of the income tax burden (42.2%). Meanwhile, the average tax burden for the top decile of households in OECD countries is 31.6 percent.

By contrast, column #2 shows that the richest decile in America earned 33.5 percent of the market income in the country in 2005 – the year in which this snapshot was taken, but little has changed since then. But, a few other countries do have a greater or similar concentration of income as does the U.S. For example, the OECD table shows that the wealthiest decile of households in Italy and Poland earn a greater share of their country's market income than do our "rich" – 35.8 percent and 33.9 percent respectively – while the share of income earned by the top decile of households in the U.K. is about on par with those in the U.S. at 32.3 percent.

The table then adjusts for the underlying allocation of income by showing the ratio of income taxes paid to the share of income earned by the top decile in each country. The ratio for U.S. households is 1.35, far greater than the ratio of taxes to income in any other country. Even in the three countries with a comparable distribution of income, the ratio of taxes to income was less, 1.18 in Italy, 0.84 in Poland, and 1.20 in the U.K.

(HT: TaxProf, via Instapundit)

As for that other boogeyman of the left, the corporation — well, the US currently has the second highest corporate tax rate among developed nations. But not for long. Come April 1, we're going to be number one:

According to a study by the Tax Foundation, America’s combined federal and state rate of 39.2 percent is only out paced by Japan’s rate of 39.5 percent – which Japan plans to lower next month. Without Japan in the lead, America’s 39.2 percent will render it the corporate tax rate leader in the developed world, aka the countries comprising the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

In recent years, many OECD nations have been lowering their corporate income tax to create more favorable environments for business. The Tax Foundation notes that since 2000 Germany, Canada, Greece, Turkey, Poland, the Slovak Republic, Iceland, and Ireland have all lowered their corporate rates by double-digits.

I'm sure all the Socialist Democrats will celebrate on April 1, chanting "We're number one! We're number one!" as we sink further into a 70s-era stagflation. Or worse.

I suspect Instapundit is correct when he opines that a Carter rerun is now the best-case scenario. 

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NPR lied

Posted by Richard on March 11, 2011

From the beginning of the NPR-gate story, it bugged me that NPR's critics were so focused on what Ron Schiller said about the Tea Party and Jews controlling the media. To me, the big story was that NPR executives were eager to schmooze with and accept funding from a front group for the Muslim Brotherhood, the parent organization of Hamas. (Although I can certainly understand why ADL is upset and demanding an apology. I don't know if Tea Party Patriots has asked for an apology.)

NPR, of course, insisted that they'd repeatedly turned down the $5 million contribution. But now that Project Veritas has released its second NPR-gate video, that claim has been shown to be a lie. And the focus is now where I think it belongs — on NPR's knowing collaboration with a Muslim Brotherhood front group, the fictitious Muslim Education Action Center, and its willingness to not only accept the donation, but help make sure the source remains anonymous.

In her conversations with MEAC's "Ibrahim Kasaam," Betsy Liley, Senior Director of Institutional Giving, suggested more than once that the donation could be directed to a specific purpose, such as supporting NPR's foreign desk or religious coverage. And she revealed that she had checked out the MEAC website, which states that the organization is dedicated to spreading Sharia "across the world."

Big Journalism's Larry O'Connor thinks it's time for a Congressional investigation: 

While taking great pains to isolate Mr Schiller (who had already tendered his resignation to the publicly-funded broadcaster) NPR also suggested to the American public that they had no intention of accepting the proposed donation from MEAC and had, in fact, “repeatedly refused” the donation.  Only later in the day did NPR reveal that they had been vetting the group as recently as last week with hopes of obtaining their 501(c)(3) credentials.  We continue to ask:  Why vet a group you have repeatedly refused to take money from?

What we are witnessing is NPR’s ‘Modified Limited Hangout’ made famous by the engineers of the Watergate cover-up.  NPR is attempting to admit guilt and beg forgiveness for the lesser “crime” of making intolerant remarks about conservatives and supporters of Israel as a means to misdirect from the much larger and odious crime of being willing to accept blood money from a Muslim Brotherhood front group.

These two conflicting accounts could very well have paved the way for CEO Vivian Schiller’s ouster as her forced resignation was announced twelve hours after our article exposing the contradiction.  Now, with today’s video showing an active engagement from the NPR development team with the journalists posing as Shariah advocates and “All Things Considered” aficionados, NPR’s attempt at deception is clear for all tax payers to see.

MEAC: “It sounded like you were saying NPR would be able to shield us from a government audit, is that correct?”

Liley: “I think that is the case, especially if you are anonymous. I can inquire about that.”

And in a subsequent e-mail from Liley to MEAC, Liley wrote that she’s “awaiting a draft of a gift agreement from our legal counsel and will share it when I have it.”  That sure is a funny way of “repeatedly refusing” a donation.

This should be the long-overdue death knell for taxpayer funding of NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which amounts to about half a billion dollars a year.

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Liberty Legal Foundation on Florida court ruling

Posted by Richard on January 29, 2011

I gave two cheers when the Virginia district court ruled that Obamacare's individual mandate is unconstitutional. I gave three cheers when the Florida district court ruled that, since the Democrats chose not to include a severability clause in that legislative monstrosity, the entire thing is unconstitutional. The Liberty Legal Foundation's Van Irion was pleased, too, but put the ruling into perspective (via email; emphasis in original): 

… I was actually pretty disappointed with the Virginia Court when it found the individual mandate unconstitutional, but then found that it could sever the individual mandate from the rest of the bill. Now at least one Federal court has corrected that mistake.

I’m also disappointed that both Courts explicitly stated that Congress has the power to regulate health care and insurance. My immediate reaction was that both judges must be reading some other Constitution. The Constitution I have does not list “regulation of health care” within the enumerated powers granted to Congress. Then I remember, they’re following Wickard v. Filburn.

You see, District Courts work under the assumption that they must follow existing precedent from higher courts and rarely even consult the Constitution. Both the Virginia and Florida Courts were simply applying Wickard v. Filburn when they re-affirmed Congress’ general authority to regulate healthcare. This is why our Obamacare Class Action lawsuit must go all the way to the Supreme Court to get Wickard v. Filburn overturned.

Our Obamacare Class Action lawsuit is STILL unique because it is the only lawsuit against Obamacare that begins and ends with one argument: the commerce clause does not grant unlimited power to Congress, therefore Wickard v. Filburn must be overturned. I may sound like a broken record, but this message needs to be repeated until everyone in America understands it. For the first 150 years after the Constitution was ratified, all courts agreed that the Commerce Clause gave Congress only the authority to prevent individual states from implementing burdensome regulations on interstate commerce. Then the FDR-packed Supreme Court destroyed our Constitutional Republic by re-interpreting the commerce clause, eliminating all limits on Congressional authority.

The goal of all of the State-filed lawsuits is to get rid of Obamacare any way they can. That is an admirable goal, but it falls short of the more important goal. Liberty Legal Foundation’s goal is NOT simply to overturn Obamacare. Our goal is to restore Constitutional limits on Congressional authority so that when the political winds shift again, Congress can’t repeat a similar massive power grab.

Obamacare is simply the latest and worst example of Congressional abuse of authority. So, it became our tool to overturn Wickard v. Filburn. For 150 years the courts got the Commerce Clause right. For the past 68 years they got it wrong based solely on the political motivations of a handful of judges. There is more historical precedent supporting our arguments than supporting Wickard. This is a fight we can win! And success means Obamacare will be overturned AND our Constitutional Republic will be restored.

I urge you to join me as a plaintiff in the Obamacare Class Action lawsuit. All you need to do is go to Liberty Legal Foundation and sign on with a minimum donation of $1 (if you can afford more, please give more).

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A SOTU worth missing

Posted by Richard on January 26, 2011

I'm glad I passed on the SOTU speech last night. Based on Steve's drunkblogging, the WSJ summary, and the commentaries and analyses I've seen, it was well worth passing up. Besides, a good portion of it seems to have been recycled from last year, with some bits from 2009 thrown in, too. 

Is this the second or third year that President Obama has solemnly declared that, like a family, the federal government must live within its means? No matter. It's not what the Prez says, it's what he does. And here's what he does (courtesy of The Captain's Comments): 

 Obama Tripled Deficit

This president has a lot of nerve talking about fiscal responsibility. How fiscally responsible is proposing a dozen or so massive new "investments" while annual deficits are well over $1 trillion? How fiscally responsible is proposing to freeze discretionary spending at its current stratospheric level?

The Republicans are talking about rolling it back to the 2008 level, and even that's far too timid. 

In his response to the SOTU, Sen. Rand Paul said he's introduced a bill to cut spending by $500 billion this year. That's more like it! Take a look: 


[YouTube link]

Check out Rep. Michele Bachmann's SOTU response, too: 


[YouTube link ]

 

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SOTU? No, thanks, I’ll pass

Posted by Richard on January 26, 2011

I've heard the Socialist Democrats' favorite euphemism for yet more government spending, "investment," about a bazillion times too many in the past few days. And I have no desire to watch a preening President congratulate himself for his "fiscal responsibility" because he's willing to freeze discretionary spending (sort of) at its current stratospheric level. So I'm going to skip the State of the Union circus and get a little more work done.

I'll check in later on Vodkapundit's drunkblogging of the event. If you're watching the speech, go there now. You'll be glad you did. But I strongly suggest not playing a drinking game where you have to take a swig whenever the Prez says "invest," or "jobs," or "working together," or "Sputnik." Your liver might not survive. 

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Obamacare costs more kids their health care coverage

Posted by Richard on November 30, 2010

Remember "If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan"? Long before Obamacare was passed, almost everyone who examined that promise objectively knew that it wouldn't be kept. Since passage, the falseness of that promise — to be precise, the mendacity, since the President isn't stupid enough to have really believed it when he said it — has become increasingly clear, as more and more people have had their coverage canceled, and more and more organizations have requested waivers from the feds.

The waivers exempt the organizations from onerous and costly new government mandates, allowing them to continue existing health care plans that fail to meet those mandates. In the absence of such waivers, millions more would be left without the health care plan they like and were promised they could keep.

Since the Obama administration clearly prefers a government of men to a government of laws, it's no surprise that who gets a waiver and who doesn't is solely at the discretion of some unelected administration lackeys. And it's no surprise that the list of waiver recipients includes quite a few unions. 

But it seems that a New York SEIU affiliate either forgot to file for a waiver or filed and didn't get it. Or maybe they just decided the new mandates were a good excuse to ditch the coverage for children of their low-wage members:

One of the largest union-administered health-insurance funds in New York is dropping coverage for the children of more than 30,000 low-wage home attendants, union officials said. The union blamed financial problems it said were caused by the state’s health department and new national health-insurance requirements.

The fund is administered by 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union. …

The fund informed its members late last month that their dependents will no longer be covered as of Jan. 1, 2011. Currently about 6,000 children are covered by the benefit fund, some until age 23.

The union fund faced a “dramatic shortfall” between what employers contributed to the fund and the premiums charged by its insurance provider, Fidelis Care, according to Mitra Behroozi, executive director of benefit and pension funds for 1199SEIU. The union fund pools contributions from several home-care agencies and then buys insurance from Fidelis.

“In addition, new federal health-care reform legislation requires plans with dependent coverage to expand that coverage up to age 26,” Behroozi wrote in a letter to members Oct. 22. “Our limited resources are already stretched as far as possible, and meeting this new requirement would be financially impossible.”

Behroozi estimated that the fund faced a $15 million shortfall in 2011 and more in the following years for the coverage of workers’ children.

The affected union members are home-care workers, and their health-care costs are said to be comparatively high and growing. So the union had already started dumping those workers from their health care plan before Obamacare passed, cutting enrollment in half over the past three years. And now it's lobbying for the state of New York to pick up more of the tab. Unfortunately for them, the state of New York doesn't seem to have a lot of extra money lying around looking for some deserving union to benefit. 

There's a certain poetic justice to seeing the SEIU, Obamacare's biggest supporters, run afoul of the costly mandates they helped bring about. But the rank-and-file members must be wondering what all those union dues they've been paying have gotten them. Why, it's almost as if all that talk about how the union protects them from exploitation by evil capitalists were a load of crap!

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The power of the technician

Posted by Richard on November 21, 2010

Daniel H. Fernald thinks TSA administrator John Pistole's response to the growing "Don't touch my junk" movement is a symptom of a problem that won't be solved by defeating Obama in 2012. It's much more fundamental. Woodrow Wilson is implicated. And French philosopher and sociologist Jacques Ellul explained it almost fifty years ago:

Politicians are decision makers. They control the levers of power. The trouble, according to Ellul, is that in an increasingly complex environment, they often don’t know how to use them.

This is where the expert, the “technician,” comes in. At the outset, the expert’s role is merely to advise political leaders on how best to accomplish politicians’ stated policy goals. The expert’s role soon progresses to determining the “one best means” of accomplishing those goals. Finally, the expert technician decides on not merely the means of pursuing the “one best means” but also determines the policy goal toward which “the one best means” is directed.

As the power of the technician waxes, that of the politician wanes, until he is little more than a rubber stamp.

…

The monstrous Leviathan into which TSA has quickly, albeit all too predictably, morphed is a textbook illustration of Ellul’s thesis. Several elected representatives of the people politely suggested that a political technician, a bureaucrat, might possibly want to think about maybe giving, you know, just a bit of thought to not forcing American citizens to choose between being irradiated or groped, and he simply said:

“No.”

That’s a quote. He didn’t mince words, he didn’t equivocate, he didn’t evade the question. He simply said, “No.”

And the politicians did nothing, because they had no power to do anything. The technician had the power, and they all knew it.

Read the whole thing.

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Deficit reduction chicanery

Posted by Richard on November 11, 2010

The "bipartisan" deficit-reduction commission has released its preliminary plan, and as many suspected, it spares government profligacy and sticks it to the taxpayers. Rush Limbaugh noted that the 50-page report uses the word "tax" 62 times. Americans for Tax Reform said, "The plan ignores every suggestion submitted by ATR President Grover Norquist to the Commission that would have balanced the budget without raising taxes. In fact, the Commission Co-Chairs refuse to acknowledge the role overspending has played in the economic climate, setting spending at the exorbitant FY2010 levels."

Not so, said commission member and Sen. Judd Gregg (RINO-NH): 

Sen. Gregg said that overall, federal spending takes a bigger hit in the plan than taxpayers do. The plan's goal is to reduce federal spending and federal revenues to 21% of gross domestic product. Federal revenues currently are projected to be about 19% of GDP in 2015, and outlays about 23%.

It would seek to achieve the pullbacks through a mix of spending cuts and increasing tax revenues—about 75% in spending reductions and about 25% from the tax side.

So it's 75% spending cuts and 25% tax increases? Three times as much in spending cuts as in tax increases? Really? Mind you, I'm not a math whiz like my friend David, who can do calculations in his head that would take me an hour with a calculator and a textbook. But something seems way off with Sen. Gregg's math.

He says the plan will cut spending from 23% of GDP to 21% of GDP. OK, according to the Commerce Dept., GDP is about $14.7 trillion now, so let's just use that number and get out the calculator.

23% − 21% = 2%
2% × $14730.2 billion = $294.604 billion

So the plan cuts spending by about $295 billion (plus 2% of whatever GDP increase there is). Now lets crunch the revenue increase, where they want to go from 19% to 21% (BTW, in the 70+ years of OMB data, revenues have never been as high as 21% of GDP).

21% − 19% of GDP = 2%
2% × $14730.2 billion = $294.604 billion

Hmm, that number looks familiar… Why, it's the same number by which their plan cuts spending! So, taxes go up about $295 billion, and revenues go up about $295 billion (adjusted upward, in both cases, for GDP growth) — yet, somehow, according to Sen. Gregg, the plan is 75% spending cuts and 25% tax increases! How is that possible? Have they magically discovered vast new sources of revenue that don't involve taxing people?

Of course not. This is the statist scam of counting it as a "spending cut" when they reduce your mortgage interest deduction, charitable deductions, and other so-called "loopholes." Just like the 9th Circuit Court in Wynn v. Garriott, the statists on the commission believe that all your income belongs to the government. So a tax deduction or credit is an "expenditure," and reducing or eliminating a tax deduction or credit — that is, letting you keep less of your money — is a "spending cut."

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Whose money is it?

Posted by Richard on November 5, 2010

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in another important Institute for Justice case, Wynn v. Garriott. I haven't been keeping up with all of IJ's fine work lately and was unfamiliar with this case, which made its way to the Supremes after the 9th Circuit reversed a ruling that the suit was frivolous.

But over at Big Government, Adam B. Schaeffer made it clear why this case is extremely important: 

The 9th Circuit’s reasoning arrogates to the state all property , dissolving the distinction between public and private funds as well as public and private choices. It is a disturbing, dangerous decision.

They assert that tax cuts are the equivalent of government funds, a conclusion possible only if one assumes that all personal income belongs by default to the state rather than to the individual who earned the money. It asserts as well that when taxpayers and parents privately choose to support religious educational organizations, they are in violation of the First Amendment. This reasoning blatantly ignores the logic and plain meaning of the 2002 Zelman decision upholding school vouchers, among others.

Here is a prediction; the court will have their absurd ruling on an Arizona education tax credit program posted on the wall of judicial shame like so many others issued from their Circuit.

But I want more from the Court. This ruling is so awful that I can only pray SCOTUS rules beyond the questionable standing of the plaintiffs and comprehensively dismembers this most egregious 9th Circuit decision.

The Obama administration has weighed in on the right side, according to the WaPo article linked above. But I suspect their motives. Acting Solicitor General Neal K. Katyal (to the apparent surprise of his former boss, Justice Kagan) argued that the taxpayers challenging Arizona's tax credit for private education donations didn't have standing to bring their suit.

I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that the Obama administration fervently hopes this case is decided on the standing issue and not on the merits because a decision on the merits is almost certainly going to go against one of their cherished, bedrock philosophical beliefs: that the government ultimately owns and controls everything.

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An uhappy anniversary

Posted by Richard on September 23, 2010

The abomination known as Obamacare became law six months ago, and several new Obamacare mandates took effect today. Starting today, health insurance policies must cover "children" to age 26, provide a bunch of new "preventive care" coverage, and have no lifetime limits.Those of us who don't believe in the tooth fairy or free lunches know what that means: insurers' costs are going up, so our premiums are going up. Of course, the government could try forcing them to operate at a loss, but that's not working out too well in Massachusetts. 

Also, health insurers can no longer refuse to write a policy for a child with a pre-existing condition. Those of us who like to warn about the unintended consequences of attempting to legislate away reality predicted the result: insurers have stopped writing policies for children, period. 

Here are some interesting reads about this unfortunate anniversary: 

ObamaCare Is Six Months Old And The Obama Administration Wants Everyone To Know How Proud It Is

Top 10 Failures of ObamaCare After Six Months  

Democrats guess wrong on health care 

The President is wrong: ObamaCare harms our generation

How Seniors Will Pay for ObamaCare

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High-priced jobs

Posted by Richard on September 20, 2010

The City of Los Angeles used its $111 million in ARRA "stimulus" money to "create or retain" 55 jobs. That's $2 million per job. They'd better get those printing presses cranked up in Washington, because at that rate they're going to need another several trillion dollars to "put America back to work."

I wonder how many jobs are created for every $111 million in private sector investment. 

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The Obama spending binge in perspective

Posted by Richard on September 14, 2010

Here's a factoid I almost missed, and maybe you did too: In the first 19 months of the Obama presidency, the US government's publicly-held debt increased by more than it did under all presidents from George Washington through Ronald Reagan (emphasis added):

The U.S. Treasury Department divides the federal debt into two categories. One is “debt held by the public,” which includes U.S. government securities owned by individuals, corporations, state or local governments, foreign governments and other entities outside the federal government itself. The other is “intragovernmental” debt, which includes I.O.U.s the federal government gives to itself when, for example, the Treasury borrows money out of the Social Security “trust fund” to pay for expenses other than Social Security.

At the end of fiscal year 1989, which ended eight months after President Reagan left office, the total federal debt held by the public was $2.1907 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That means all U.S. presidents from George Washington through Ronald Reagan had accumulated only that much publicly held debt on behalf of American taxpayers. That is $335.3 billion less than the $2.5260 trillion that was added to the federal debt held by the public just between Jan. 20, 2009, when President Obama was inaugurated, and Aug. 20, 2010, the 19-month anniversary of Obama's inauguration.

Lots of change. Not much hope.

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The cyber-collectivist threat

Posted by Richard on July 23, 2010

I was vaguely aware that a group of radical leftists had formed a new organization named "Free Press." And I assumed that their goal was to put control of the flow of information back into the "proper" hands. That they wanted to silence me. Well, not me specifically; they've never heard of me (let's be honest, how many people have?). But everyone like me.

I was right. Adam Thierer has the gory details (emphasis added):

There are many battle fronts in the war for human freedom, but perhaps the least-appreciated of these is the battle over America's communications and media marketplace and whether free markets or government mandates will ultimately rule them. This battle takes on added importance since all other public policy debates depend upon an unfettered press and robust, independent channels of communication.

What many on the far Left have long understood, and many defenders of freedom have failed to appreciate, is that the battle for control of media and communications policy is fundamentally tied up with the broader war for control of our economy and society. "Instead of waiting for the revolution to happen, we learned that unless you make significant changes in the media, it will be vastly more difficult to have a revolution," argues the prolific Marxist media theorist Robert W. McChesney. "While the media is not the single most important issue in the world, it is one of the core issues that any successful Left project needs to integrate into its strategic program."

Normally we wouldn't need to pay attention to what unrepentant ‘60's radicals or neo-Marxist university professors think about media and communications policy. In this case, however, it is essential we pay attention. First, McChesney is right in one sense: history reveals that almost every successful effort to impose sweeping controls over an economy / society was accompanied by government efforts to control press and communication systems. If the State is going to have any luck gaining widespread and far-reaching control of an economy, gaining more control over "the Press" – which means all of us these days – becomes an essential part of the "strategic program" for control. Second, we need to pay attention to these radicals because McChesney and the group that he and John Nichols of The Nation co-founded – the insultingly misnamed Free Press – have given this fight new immediacy with their relentless agitation for media and communications policy "reform." And they are not the only ones.

Read the whole thing. Thierer is correct: control over the flow of information is critical to control over the people. And control over the people is what McChesney, Nichols, and their many friends and ideological allies in the current administration want. 

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The tyranny of the public interest

Posted by Richard on July 23, 2010

Yaron Brook in Investor's Business Daily:

In the years leading up to 2008—09's financial meltdown, government control over mortgages, interest rates and America's banking system was at an all-time high.

And yet when crisis struck, free enterprise took the blame.

The cure, therefore, was to give government even wider powers. Washington can now bail out any company, fire CEOs, override contracts and print billions of dollars to "stimulate" the economy — all in the name of the public interest. The result? Our deficits and debt continue to mount, and there's a real possibility of a future like Greece's.

This is the state of our world today. It's remarkably similar to the state of the world in Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged," a mystery story about a future America whose economy is disintegrating and whose government is accumulating power faster than anyone thought possible. This parallel is a big reason a record 500,000 people bought "Atlas Shrugged" last year.

So what can we learn from a book that foresaw in 1957 what few believed possible in 2007? We can learn a lesson the heroes of the novel learn: the cause of the government's greater, destructive control of business. And we can learn how to oppose it.

Read. The. Whole. Thing.

From the comments, a great quote: 

The pursuit of wealth generally diverts men of great talents and strong passions from the pursuit of power; and it frequently happens that a man does not undertake to direct the fortunes of the state until he has shown himself incompetent to conduct his own.
— Alexis de Tocqueville, "Democracy in America," 1835

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