One of my favorite modern authors, Robert B. Parker, died at home, literally while writing his next Spenser novel. I have read the whole Spenser series several times over the years and buy each new one as soon as it comes out in paperback. I wonder if he has tucked away in his files a final Spenser novel in which Spenser also dies, or at least retires. In any case, my condolences to his wife Joan, who was clearly the love of his life. I guess I’ll go downstairs, dig out “The Godwulf Manuscript”, and start one last pass.  ..bruce w..

“I . . . don’t know. What . . . could he do? What would you tell him?”

“To shrug.”

I first read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand back in high school, most likely during my junior year (1969-70), so it was close to 40 years ago. Reading it was de rigeur among the nerdy, intellectual group I was a part of at Grossmont High, and it inspired a few of our members who worked in the GHS administrative office as student aides to create a mythical student, “John Gault” (misspelling deliberate), who would pop up from time to time on the daily “Do Not Admit” list of students who were truant or had unexcused absences. In retrospect, I’m sure that many of the GHS teachers saw that name on the list and rolled their eyes, but we thought it was clever.

I honestly don’t know if I ever re-read it before now — it’s not a book one picks up lightly — but if I did, I’m sure it was no later than my undergraduate years at college. So it’s been at least 30 years (and perhaps longer) since I last read it. Given its resurgent popularity, I decided a few weeks ago it was time to read it again. However, having seen the paperback edition — with its minuscule print — at a bookstore at LAX, I opted to order the hardbound edition via Amazon. And then I dug in and read the whole thing.

I’m glad I did.

The Novel Itself

Atlas Shrugged is, for all intents, an alternate history SF novel set in the United States in the latter part of the 20th Century — probably the late 60s or early 70s, roughly 10-15 years after Rand wrote it, though no time frame is ever given. It is a dystopic novel; the United States has clearly entered into another major economic slump, most likely another depression from the description of vacant and crumbling buildings in urban centers as well as glimpses of rather primitive living conditions in rural areas. Socialism/communism appears to be gaining ground throughout the world  — there are references to “the People’s Republic of Mexico”, “the People’s Republic of Turkey”, “the People’s State of Norway”, “the People’s State of England”, “the People’s State of Germany”, and so on. Even in the United States, there is a clear trend towards socialism/fascism, with the government directly or indirectly seeking to control manufacturing and business, though largely through industry councils, the press, public opinion, occasional legislation, and high-ranking Federal officials.

In this setting, Rand introduces a series of hyper-competent characters: Dagny Taggart, the woman who really should be running Taggart Transcontinental (a major US railroad firm) rather than her sniveling brother James; Hank Rearden, the founder and owner of a series of mining and refining companies and inventor of “Rearden Metal”, a new alloy much lighter and stronger than steel; Francisco d’Anconia, brilliant polymath and the heir to a centuries-old global mining conglomerate; Ellis Wyatt, founder and owner of oil production enterprises in Colorado (and of a new process to extra oil from oil shale at competitive prices); Richard Halley, a brilliant composer; and several others. They are a bit reminiscent of similar characters found in Robert Heinlein novels, except they are less flawed and tend to lack the ability to laugh at themselves.

The fundamental conflict in the novel is between these characters and the rest of society, including their competitors and the US government. These major characters want to do what they are really good at, in their respective areas of business, for the sake of making a profit; the government (and society) wants them not to “unfairly compete” and to “give back” to society, and slowly brings increasing pressure to bear, via industry councils, legislation, and Federal mandates. In some respects, you can think of Atlas Shrugged as an 1100-page economic/industrial version of Kurt Vonnegut’s classic short story, “Harrison Bergeron“.

The novel, as a novel, has flaws. It is very long (1168 pages in the current hardbound edition), given the relatively small scope of the novel itself, and frankly could have been cut by about 40%. It is polemic and didactic, overly so; for example, it contains many long monologues by the major characters, including the famous radio address by the near-mythic John Galt near the end of the novel that goes on for sixty (60) pages and that would take well over 2 hours to deliver. The characters often feel more like chess pieces, archetypes, rather than real human beings. For that matter, Rand tends to divide the human race (as portrayed in her novel)  largely into three groups: the small number of hypercompetent individuals, a much larger group of those jealous of — and seeking to exploit or live off of — their abilities, and the masses caught in the middle. The novel is suffused with Rand’s “rational self-interest” philosophy, Objectivism, which is itself a bit controversial (to say the least); the novel also reflects her origins as a emigrant from the Soviet Union and her ongoing dismay with the seduction of the American Left by socialist and even Communist sympathies from the 1930s into the 1950s. Finally, in light of the feminist sensibilities elsewhere in the novel, Rand has some, well, interesting ideas about sex and love, or at least her characters do.

For all its flaws, though, Atlas Shrugged remains a brilliant work of intellect and a remarkably compelling story, even if you don’t agree with its premises and conclusions. There are many polemic and didactic novels written over the past 50 years that have vanished with little or no trace; the fact that Rand’s work still sells and is selling now stronger than ever speaks to the nerves that she did not just touch but attacked at length with sharp, pointed instruments.

Interesting Contemporary Parallels

For a work written half a century ago, Atlas Shrugged remains surprisingly timely. In an eerie echo of today, many (if not most) critical economic and political decisions are made not by the President or Congress, but by a host of civilian advisors who spend as much time  jockeying amongst themselves for position and influence as they do trying to solve the country’s problems. In the novel itself, the focus on trains, mining, steel, and manufacturing, especially within the United States, all seem very quaint and archaic in our digital/silicon/networked/globalized civilization, but every few pages, Rand will have a passage that is not only relevant but often prescient.

For example, consider this passage regarding one major (unsympathetic) character who ends up as a powerful government bureaucrat (all page numbers are taken from the 2005 hardbound edition; all bolded emphasis is mine; comments are in brackets):

“My purpose,” said Orren Boyle, “is the preservation of a free economy. It’s generally conceded that free economy is now on trial. Unless it proves its social value and assumes its social responsibilities, the people won’t stand for it. If it doesn’t develop a public spirit, it’s done for, make no mistake about that.

Orren Boyle has appeared from nowhere, five years ago, and had since made the cover of every national news magazine. He had started with a hundred thousand dollars of his own and a two-hundred-million-dollar loan from the government. Now he headed an enormous concern which had swallowed many other companies. This proved, he liked to say, that individual ability still had a chance to succeed in the world.

“The only justification of private property,” said Orren Boyle, “is public service.” (p. 45)

Likewise, in response to the major technological breakthrough of Rearden Metal and its successful use by Dagny Taggart to create a 100 mph train railway (the “John Galt Line”) from the East Coast to Colorado, resulting in a growing number of East Coast manufacturing firms relocating to Colorado, the following happens:

The Union of Locomotive Engineers was demanding that the maximum speed of all trains on the John Galt Line be reduced to sixty miles per hour. The Union of Railway Conductors and Breakmen was demanding that the length of all freight trains on the John Galt Line be reduced to sixty cards.

The states of Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona were demanding that the number of trains run in Colorado not exceed the number of trains run in each of those neighboring states.

A group headed by Orren Boyle was demanding the passage of a Preservation of Livelihood Law, which would limit the production of Rearden Metal to an amount equal to the output of any other steel mill of equal plant capacity.

A group headed by Mr. Mowen was demanding the passage of a Fair Share Law to give every customer who wanted it an equal supply of Rearden Metal.

A group headed by Bertram Scudder was demanding the passage of a Public Stability Law, forbidding Eastern business firms to move out of their states.

Wesley Mouch, Top Co-Ordinator of the [Federal] Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources [think: Tim Geithner at Treasury], was issuing a great many statements, the content and purpose of which could not be defined, except that the words “emergency powers” and “unbalanced economy” kept appearing in the text every few lines. (p. 299)

Substitute modern shibboleths such as “environmental impact” and “greedy CEOs”, and you can see the same mindset at work today. Or, if you want to talk about the Community Redevelopment Act and the resulting subprime crisis, here’s an interesting variant — a group of speculators gain title to a defunct auto factory and then sue a financial firm because it won’t loan them development money because they’re a poor credit risk:

“…It was an economic emergency law which said that people were forbidden to discriminate for any reason whatever against any person in any matter involving his livelihood. It was used to protect day laborers and such, but it applied to me and my partners as well, didn’t it? So we went to court, and we testified about all the bad breaks we’d all had in the past, and I quoted Mulligan [the bank president] saying that I couldn’t even own a vegetable pushcart, and proved that all the members of the Amalgamated Service corporation [the speculators] had no prestige, no credit, no way to make a living — and, therefore, the purchase of the motor factory was our only chance of livelihood — and, therefore, Midas Mulligan had no right to discriminate against us–and, therefore, we were entitled to demand a loan from him under the law. …[they lose in court] … But we appealed to a higher court…and the higher court reversed the verdict and ordered Mulligan to give us the loan on our terms.” (pp. 317-318, emphasis mine)

Or this, two nameless characters overheard talking about Wesley Mouch, the Geithner-analog:

“But laws shouldn’t be passed that way, so quickly.”

“They’re not laws, they’re directives.”

“Then it’s illegal.”

“It’s not illegal, because the Legislature [i.e., Congress] passed a law last month giving him the power to issue directives.”

“I don’t think directives should be sprung on people that way, out of the blue, like a punch on the nose.”

“Well, there’s no time to palaver when it’s a national emergency.” (p. 333, emphasis mine)

Or, speaking of small domestic oil producers in the wake of the vanishing of the largest domestic oil producer and the restrictions on other industries (including railroads):

Not until their fortunes had vanished and their pumps had stopped, did the little fellows realize that no business in the country could afford to buy oil at the price it would now take them to produce it. Then the boys in Washington granted subsidies to the oil operators, but not all of the oil operators had friends in Washington, and there followed a situation which no one cared to examine too closely or discuss. (p. 350)

Or:

Empty trains clattered through the four states that were tied, as neighbors, to the throat of Colorado. They carried a few carloads of sheep, some corn, some melons and an occasional farmer with an overdressed family, who had friends in Washington. Jim [Taggart] had obtained a subsidy from Washington for every train that was run, not as a profit-making carrier, but as a service of “public equity.” (p. 351)

Or (with thoughts of TARP):

Nobody professed to understand the question of the frozen railroad bonds; perhaps, because everybody understood it too well. At first, there had been signs of a panic among the bondholders and of a dangerous indignation among the public. Then, Wesley Mouch has issued another directive, which ruled that people could get their bonds “defrozen” upon a plea of “essential need”: the government would purchase the bonds, if it found the proof of the need satisfactory. There were three questions that no one answered or asked: “What constituted proof?” “What constituted need?” “Essential — to whom?”

… One was supposed to describe, not to explain, to catalogue facts, not to evalute them: Mr. Smith had been defrozen, Mr. Jones had not; that was all. And when Mr. Jones committed suicide, people said, “Well, I don’t know, if he’d really needed his money, the government would have given it to him, but some men are just greedy.”

One was not supposed to speak about the men who, having been refused, sold their bonds for one-third value to other men who possessed needs which, miraculously, made thirty-three frozen cents melt into a whole dollar [think: toxic assets and PPIP]; or about a new profession practiced by bright young boys just out of college, who called themselves “defreezers” and offered their services “to help you draft your application in the proper modern terms.” The boys had friends in Washington.  (p. 352)

Or, thinking of the Detroit bailouts:

Six weeks ago, Train Number 193 had been sent with a load of steel, not to Faulkton, Nebraska, where the Spencer Machine Tool Company, the best machine tool concern still in existence, had been idle for two weeks, waiting for the shipment — but to Sand Creek, Illinois, where Confederated Machines had been wallowing in debt for over a year, producing unreliable goods at unpredictable times. The steel had been allocated by a directive which explained that the Spencer Machine Tool Company was a rich concern, able to wait, while Confederate Machines was bankrupt and could not be allowed to collapse, being the sole source of livelihood of the community of Sand Creek, Illlinois. The Spencer Machine Tool Company had closed a month ago. Confederated Machines had closed two weeks later.

The people of Sand Creek, Illinois, had been placed on national relief, but no food could be found for them in the empty granaries of the nation at the frantic call of the moment — so the seed grain of the farmers of Nebraska had been seized by order of the Unification Board — and Train Number 194 had carried the unplanted harvest and the future of the people of Nebraska to be consume by the people of Illinois. “In this enlightened age,” Eugene Lawson had said in a radio broadcast, “we have come, at last, to realize that each of of us is his brother’s keeper.” (p. 911)

And so on. I could find and put up scores of such passages, perhaps a few hundred, without much effort. The overarching theme is one echoed today: that government, in addressing what is seen as economic inequalities, ends up punishing success and rewarding failure, all in the name of fairness and compassion. The novel offers what I’m sure Rand felt was the best (if not only) rational response to such a society; some of that is addressed in the spoilers below, but you need to read the novel itself to get the full scope of Rand’s thoughts.

To be honest, I think that Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress does a much better job of conveying many of the same libertarian sympathies found in Atlas Shrugged and is a better-written and more entertaining novel, to boot. (It’s also a lot shorter and more readable.) What’s more, Rand’s portrayal of a socialist USA goes to an extreme that I fully believe impossible, but as the passages quoted earlier show, many examples strike all too close to home.

Still, whatever its flaws, anachronisms, and idiosyncrasies, Atlas Shrugged remains as relevant today as it was 50 years ago and perhaps more so than in recent years. If your inclinations are towards the liberal/progressive side of the political spectrum, you will likely hate the novel and will not get through it; you of conservative or libertarian bent will likely enjoy it, though you may have trouble getting through the last 400 pages (which should have been about 40 pages instead).

But whatever your views, Atlas Shrugged is a novel that will continue to sell, and sell steadily, for decades to come. And with the economic future of the United States as reflected in the graphic below, I suspect it will continue to enjoy its current position on the Amazon bestseller lists.

An ugly, ugly graph.

[My thanks to Rand Simberg and Ace of Spades for the links; also, I've made some minor edits and one correction (thank you, Erik).]

SPOILERS AHEAD (if you can have spoilers for a 50+ year old novel)

Rand’s original title for this novel was The Strike, and that sums up the core of its plot: what if the brilliant, talented people in society — those who actually invent, create, lead and produce –  got fed up with government’s and society’s efforts to control, mandate, and take what they were accomplishing, and so closed down their respective plants and enterprises and simply vanished? (Hence the growing catchphrase, “Going John Galt“.) You can get a taste of that right now with the brain drain on Wall Street: people are leaving because of government controls on what they can earn, because of government officials deciding how much income is “fair” for “Wall Street fat cats”. In fact, that language could come straight out of Atlas Shrugged; for example:

In the eyes of his contemporaries, [Midas Mulligan, a very successful financier] was a man who had committed the one unforgivable sin: he was proud of his wealth. (p. 316)

There are several brilliant/successful individuals who have already disappeared when the novel opens, and more vanish as the novel progresses. What’s more, regular competent individuals start leaving the workforce as well, rather than work for increasingly dysfucntional businesses. The result is a deepening of the financial and infrastructure crisis in America: energy and food shortages, disruption of transportation, climbing unemployment, declining consumer spending.

As it turns out, this core group of dropouts have constructed a small utopia of sorts, hidden away in the Rockies, where they spend time between their anonymous forays into the disintegrating nation around them. The common oath they all must swear to be admitted there is: “I swear — by my life and my love of it — that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask any other man to live for mine.” The community is run on a strict cash-only basis, with gold as the only currency, and everyone there hires themselves out for ‘menial’ jobs as well as pursuing their areas of expertise.

Back in the real world, the US Government reacts to the ongoing collapse by seizing more and more control over private industry, culminating with “Directive 10-289″, which freezes production levels, wages, prices, and all R&D and new product development, while at the same time requiring that all intellectual property (copyright, patent, trade secrets) be turned over to the US Government both in the name of equity and to help get out of the current economic crisis. It also forbids anyone from leaving or changing jobs without authorization from a Federal board. This merely accelerates the rate of people dropping out of the workforce, as well as the dysfunctionality and disintegration of most enterprises, leading to a near-total collapse of the United States as a functioning civilization.

It is in this context that John Galt (using new technology) jams the radio waves and broadcasts his long speech nationwide. After that happens, the civilian leaders in charge become more frantic, but their various attempts to remedy problems just make things worse. However, they manage to capture John Galt (who spends much of his time out in the collapsing US) and do their best to boost consumer confidence by staging photo-ops of Galt with the top government civilian advisors and making media claims that they have come up with “the John Galt Plan” to save the US economy. Galt, however, refuses to play along; they beg him to take control, but then reject all of his suggestions and refuse to change their fundamental approach to government and the economy. They finally resort to threats and even torture, but Galt maintains his postion. In the end, Galt is rescued and taken back to the refuge even as the lights in New York City go out and the last transportation link between the eastern and western US is severed. The novel ends with the utopia group making their plans on how to re-enter civilization and pick up the pieces. One member of that group, a retired judge, is adding an amendment to the US Constitution: “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade.”

If you don’t want to read the whole novel, you can always buy the Cliff’s Notes for it. But then you’ll miss all the great parallels, such as those cited above.

Definitely a thumbs-up.  ..bruce w..

Might as well start getting used to it.

OVERNIGHT LINKS

ITEM: Hey! Al Gore and I both celebrated Earth Hour with our lights on! We’re buds now! As for Kentucky, heck, they celebrated a whole Earth Week not long ago!

ITEM: Creeping socialism/fascism alert: Obama tells GM CEO to hit the road. For firms and organizations still considering taking government money, there’s a story about a camel sticking its nose into a tent during a sandstorm that’s worth remembering. Ford, at least, appears to have remembered that story. And Darleen Click has some other cautionary observations.

ITEM: Courtesy of Lucianne.com:

ITEM: Say Anything pretty much sums it up: “In 45 Days Obama Administration Has Authorized More Debt Than Reagan Did In 8 Years“.

ITEM: Obama is taking an entourage of 500 people for his trip to Europe. I wonder if the media will give that figure coverage equal to that given to Bush a few years back? Particularly the part about local law enforcement? And note that Obama is going to London, not a near-active war zone.

ITEM: A week or two before Glenn Reyonds (Instapundit) first started quoting the Li’l Abner song title, “The Country’s in the Very Best of Hands”, I posted the entire lyrics here at ASIP, thanks to a showing of the movie on TCM, and noted its remarkable timeliness. But Glenn has now gone one better and posted a link to the actual movie clip.

ITEM: Remember my earlier discussion about how “the Greater Fool theory” drives the stock market? Well, investors may be starting to wonder if there are some greater fools running around out there.

ITEM: Caught between Scylla and Charybdis: are we going to end up with inflation or deflation? And if you think deflation sounds good, Woman on Fire Megan McArdle ‘splains it all to you.

ITEM: NY Times article headline states, “Anglo-American Capitalism on Trial.“ To paraphrase Chesterton, it’s not that capitalism has been tried and found wanting; it has been found risky and inequitable, and thus is being abandoned. But however bad capitalism is, to paraphrase Churchill, all the other economic systems are so much worse.

RELATED ITEM: I strongly recommend reading my all-time favorite economic treatise, Eat the Rich by P. J. O’Rourke. Unlike most economists, op-ed columnists, and politicians, O’Rourke actually visited all the countries in question (US, Albania, Sweden, Cuba, Russia, Tanzania, Hong Kong, Singapore), talked to relevant parties, and wrote up his observations. His first chapter is on Wall Street (“Good Capitalism”), but his closing paragraphs for that chapter — written over a decade ago during the dot.com bubble — are remarkably prescient on several levels:

Wall Street’s free-market capitalism is doubtless a wonderful thing and a boon to humanity, but it scared me. The free market scared me even when I watched it function under the rule of law. Capitalism scared me despite the fact that I was seeing it operate within a well-defined set of rules understood by all the players. And I liked the players. Capitalists are at least as honest and nice as the people I know who don’t have capital. But I was still scared.

Free-market capitalism was terrifying under the best circumstances. What it was like under the worse circumstances, I couldn’t imagine. And becaue I couldn’t imagine it, I needed to go someplace that had no rules and was full of crooks. I considered Washington D.C., but Albania looked like more fun.

ITEM: More on the time-bomb ticking to the south of us (emphasis mine):

The presence of the informers, some of them former soldiers, highlights a central paradox in Mexico’s ambitious and bloody assault on the drug cartels that have ravaged the country. The nation has launched a war, but it cannot fully rely on the very institutions — the police, customs, the courts, the prisons, even the relatively clean army — most needed to carry it out.

The cartels bring in billions of dollars more than the Mexican government spends to defeat them, and they spend their wealth to bolster their ranks with an untold number of politicians, judges, prison guards and police officers — so many police officers, in fact, that entire forces in cities across Mexico have been disbanded and rebuilt from scratch.

ITEM: David Rothkopf wonders in a WaPo op-ed, “Where are the leaders?”, but places blame everywhere but on Obama. Key quote: “But to paraphrase Roosevelt, Obama can only be as great a president as the people let him be.” Oh, please.

ITEM: Since we’re giving a billion dollars to the terrorists running Gaza, wouldn’t it make sense to give some money to the actual democracy in the region?

ITEM: What a surprise! Sen. Chris Dodd (D-self) pressed AIG for campaign donations even as he gained power in the Senate Banking Committee. And yet the Left and the media are still fixated on Jack Abramoff.

ITEM: We almost lost a third Space Shuttle some 21 years ago during a top-secret satellite mission. Key indicator of government idiocy:

“Their conclusion, which they did not pass back to us, was ‘oh, you know what? That’s not tile damage, those are just lights and shadows we’re seeing in this video.’ So in other words, the resolution on the encrypted video was that bad that they based a conclusion on it that was in gross error. … If I had said hey, I think this is important enough for us to break the encryption and send you guys clear video, oh, it would have been pandemonium down there at DOD. But in hindsight, oh man, that’s what we should have done. Because they were drawing an incorrect conclusion from it and they were not telling us what their conclusion was.”

Translation: the US government would only let the NASA engineers look at low-quality encrypted video to inspect tiles. It turns out that the shuttle was badly damaged and almost had a Columbia-type burn-through.  Read the whole story; hat tip to Ace of Spaces.

Possibly more links later. ..bruce w..

...has far to go.

AFTERNOON UPDATES:

ITEM: NASA Scientist and Moonbat Warmist James Hansen says that “The democratic process doesn’t quite seem to be working” with regards to climate change and is calling for protests and direct action (Wikipedia: “Direct action can include nonviolent and violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the direct action participant.”). The man is certainly free to speak his mind, but he should not be calling for “violent activities” as an official of the US Government.

ITEM: Speaking of NASA, they should look at hiring these teenage students over in Spain.

ITEM: Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski to Barack Obama: stop opinining on the NCAA playoffs and focus on the economy. (“It’s the economy, stupid.” — James Carville to Bill Clinton in 1992.)

ITEM: Texas Thunderdome: “Texas High School Staged Cage Fights Between Students, Documents Say.” As my wife said, “Only in Texas.” (And I’ve lived there twice and love the state.)  “Two men enter; one man leaves.” — Tina Turner to Mel Gibson.

ITEM: Congressional hearings on ACORN, which organization the White House wants to have help out with the 2010 Census. More commentary and coverage over at Ace of Spaces.

ITEM: “Think of it as evolution in action”: individuals unlikely to reproduce.

ITEM: Mickey Kaus (a daily must-read) comments on the existence of “Journolist”, the left-wing echo chamber (or is that “star chamber”) for journalists (I posted about it on Tuesday)) and is told to shut up if he knows what’s good for him (or something like that).

ITEM: He can run but he can’t hide. Karl posting at Patterico’s Pontifications documents just how complicit Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) was in the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac debacle and, in fact, in the whole subprime catastrophe.

OVERNIGHT/MORNING POSTS:

ITEM: It’s a bull market rally for Obama’s popularity! The Rasmussen Obama Approval Index is back up to +7!

ITEM: And now Obama’s ubiquitous teleprompter has its own blog! (Hat tip to Mark Hemingway at the NRO Corner.)

ITEM: According to one Congressman, thirteen of the bailout firms are deliquent on $220 million in taxes. Hey, it’s not like they’re being nominated for a Cabinet position or anything.

ITEM: A group of moderate Democratic Senators is questioning the current headlong rush on the Obama agenda. Of course, they haven’t done anything to halt it so far. Bryan York documents Obama tossing fiscal responsibility under the bus. Nouriel Roubini joins the chorus trying to point out that US economics have been one big Madoff/Ponzi scheme for years. And Amity Schlaes points out lessons for us (and for the US) from other countries.

ITEM: Obama in his town hall meeting yesterday assured his listeners that rich people can afford to pay more taxes, with “rich” meaning an income of over $250,000. Leaving aside the class warfare implications, what about small businesses, particularly LLCs and sole proprietorships? That’s where much of the job growth is, and that’s exactly where the Obama Tax Hike will hurt people the most. Obama’s solution?  Lend them more money so they can pay those taxes.

ITEM: I predicted yesterday that the Obama idea to make veterans wounded in action pay for their medical treatment using their private insurance would be gone by Friday. I was too conservative; it died yesterday afternoon.

ITEM: So the new question is: will Treasury Sec’y Tim Geithner be gone by Friday? This Time article sure isn’t going to help him. Meanwhile, the folks at Bespoke Premium are betting it won’t happen until either the end of June or the end of the year. They don’t understand that when Obama wants to get rid of someone, they go quickly.

ITEM: Remember Bush’s comments from yesterday? “”I’m not going to spend my time criticizing him. There are plenty of critics in the arena. … He deserves my silence.” It just struck me that Bush may have remembered the famous dictum (usually attributed to Napoleon), “Never interfere with your enemy when he is in the process of destroying himself.”

ITEM: Bush may be keeping quiet but Karl Rove — the Democrat’s other favorite eeeevillll mastermind (besides Cheney) during the past eight years — is not.

ITEM: Obama, the “common man” who is so angry at those Wall Street fat cats, signed a children’s book deal that included a $500,000 cash advance just five days before he took office as President. Nice work, if you can get it, particularly since it only involves editing down one of his existing books, not actually writing a new one. Does anyone think that Crown Publishing would have paid him half a million if he hadn’t been elected President. And doesn’t that mean he is, in effect, trading on his status as President to make money? From the article:

Analysts say there don’t appear to be any rules that would bar such transactions after a president takes office, but it’s unclear whether an incoming or sitting president has ever signed a book deal upon entering the White House.

“I don’t recall any sitting president entering into a book deal,” said campaign finance lawyer Jan Baran, former general counsel to the Republican National Committee. “They all have historically done that after they leave office.

ITEM: Once a Communist, always a Communist! Mikhail Gorbachev argues for state control of economics. Yep, we all remember how well that worked out for the (former) Soviet Union!

ITEM: Peter Brown schools VP Joe Biden, as does John DeVore,  over his latest inanity (“President Obama has inherited the most difficult first 100 days of any president, I would argue, including Franklin Roosevelt.”) Yep, the smartest man in the room, alright.

ITEM: Obama claims “the buck stops here” with regards to the AIG bonuses but then (as Philip Klein puts it) goes on to blame other people. That’s not quite accepting responsibility, is it?

ITEM: In the meantime, the Obama Administration is now throwing the Federal Reserve Bank under the bus over the AIG bonuses. Everyone’s to blame but Obama.

ITEM: And what about all those Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonuses? If you want to talk about corrupt and insolvent, Fannie and Freddie fit the bill.

ITEM: Meanwhile, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Ireland) admits that, yes, he did indeed insert the loophole for the AIG but did so at the insistence of the Treasury Department. Paging Tim Geithner….

ITEM: Shepard Smith at Fox News speaks truth to power about the hypocrisy and grandstanding that Congress is doing right now over AIG  (hat tip to Gerard Vanderleun at American Digest):

ITEM: In a similar vein, Caroline Baum over at Bloomberg.com compares the AIG situation to “Atlas Shrugged” and says that Obama needs new AIG Chairman Liddy more than Liddy needs Obama. Diana Furchtgott-Roth, in the meantime, sees all the AIG-bashing as a political smokescreen (and I might add, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”). And Michael Godwin at the NY Daily News says that Congress was the real loser at yesterday’s hearings.

ITEM:  Speaking of hypocrisy, someone on the radio today asked a simple question: why is Congress so outraged over $165 million in post-bailout bonuses, yet just a few weeks ago they passed a spending bill with nearly $5.5 billion in earmarks (over 30 times more than the AIG bonuses). Oh, and Obama signed that bill, despite his campaign promises to the contrary. Of course, he also signed the stimulus bill that allowed the AIG bonuses. Of course, Daniel Drezner argues — not without reason — that neither bonuses nor earmarks matter very much in the whole scheme of things.

ITEM: Obama compares dealing with AIG to dealing with a suicide bomber. No, really.

ITEM: Speaking of suicide bombers, our new US Attorney General Eric Holder has stated that he may release  some of the Gitmo terrorist detainees right here in the United States. This has been a public service announcement.

ITEM: James Lewis over at American Thinker wonders if the Democrats really, really understand where all this is going to end? (Here’s a clue: very, very badly.)

ITEM: From the sauce for the goose department: SEIU (that’s a biiig union, and one that’s quite cosy with the Obama Administration) has had a unfair labor complaint filed against it by its own unionized employees, who claim that it’s laying off salaried staff and going to outside contractors.

ITEM: The Dem’s future nightmare, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, is still killing wolves. Hey, she has to keep her fighting edge somehow.  And, boy, wasn’t it a good thing she didn’t end up in the White House?

I’m sure there’s more out there, but you’re on your own for now.  ..bruce w..

(Image stolen from American Digest)

We aim to please (most mostly we aim to hit) . . .

MID-MORNING UPDATE: The FBI raids the office of the DC Chief Technology Officer, who is (or was) Vivek Kundra, who is now the new CTO for the Obama Administration. However, it appears that the focus is not on Kundra, but on two other employees who work in that office and who were both arrested by the FBI this morning. Much more of this, and I’ll start feeling sorry for Obama. Hat tip to Drudge.

Preparing for the next great land rush, with a wonderful equation for estimating the market value of located terrestrial planets.

And speaking of land rushes: the English Marsh frog Invasion. With maps and photos.)

The inside story (if one can trust a thief) of one of the greatest criminal heists ever. (Hat tip to Boing Boing.)

Back to our original links . . .

Warren Buffett famously said that “It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked.” He was talking about economic issues, but I think it can be applied to the Obama Administration in other ways as well.

Example #1: The Washington Post editorial board weighs in on the failed Chas Freeman nomination to the NIC:

It wasn’t until Mr. Freeman withdrew from consideration for the job, however, that it became clear just how bad a selection Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair had made. Mr. Freeman issued a two-page screed on Tuesday in which he described himself as the victim of a shadowy and sinister “Lobby” whose “tactics plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency” and which is “intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government.” Yes, Mr. Freeman was referring to Americans who support Israel — and his statement was a grotesque libel. . . .

What’s striking about the charges by Mr. Freeman and like-minded conspiracy theorists is their blatant disregard for such established facts. Mr. Freeman darkly claims that “it is not permitted for anyone in the United States” to describe Israel’s nefarious influence. But several of his allies have made themselves famous (and advanced their careers) by making such charges — and no doubt Mr. Freeman himself will now win plenty of admiring attention. Crackpot tirades such as his have always had an eager audience here and around the world. The real question is why an administration that says it aims to depoliticize U.S. intelligence estimates would have chosen such a man to oversee them.

Ouch! That’s got to leave a mark, both on Freeman and on the Obama Administration.

Example #2 — whack! Another mark on the Obama Administration left by David Ignatius in an WaPo op-ed:

We’re still in the Neville Chamberlain phase when it comes to the economic crisis. The government is talking about sacrifice and solutions, but it hasn’t yet made the tough decisions that will put the economy back together. Economist David Smick had it right in The Post this week when he said the administration had a three-pronged strategy: delay, delay and delay. The administration announces a rescue package but doesn’t deliver details; it promises budget discipline but saves the hard decisions for later.

One reason this season feels so political is that Obama has stacked his administration with politicians and former government officials. You might think that with the greatest financial crisis of his lifetime, the president would want a few business leaders with experience managing large organizations in crisis. But no.

As they say, read the whole thing. It’s not like the Ignatius and the WaPo editorial board are conservatives, either. However, the WaPo op-ed page managed to uphold its leftist creds with this piece of economic silliness. The Christian Science Monitor begs to differ.

Finally, example #3: R. Emmett Tyrell says that he misses Bill Clinton as President and that Obama’s disasters may salvage Clinton’s Presidential legacy. The Apocalypse is near, indeed.

Meanwhile, as the New York Times blames the Freeman fiasco “on the Jooooos” (in Ace of Spades’ euphonious phrase), Gail Collins and David Brooks engage in some mutual navel-gazing about how clever they are while ostensibly talking about the Obama administration.

Funny, the mainstream media usually loves polls of experts; I wonder why this one isn’t getting much play outside of the Wall Street Journal.

The mainstream media also loves stories about big corporations suppressing artistic expression, which again makes me wonder why this story has seen so little press coverage.

The State Department and — surprise! — the mainstream media take a “speak no evil” approach to the “reset button” fiasco. As the writer says, can you imagine the media reaction if this had happened in the Bush administration?

Now consider the following:

The men who run these organizations are not a bunch of coked out cowboys slinging their pistols in the air as they party day and night. No, these are intelligent, educated men with the resources to surround themselves with some of the sharpest minds on the planet. They run global, multi-billion dollar businesses that operate around the clock, around the world. They know the power of knowledge. They have the latest in technologies and weaponry, they use satellites for communications and surveillance. They employ their own private armies–fully trained and armed to teeth–in order to protect their operations.

Rusty Fleming, over at Big Hollywood, is describing the Mexican Drug Trafficing Organizations (DTOs) that increasingly are the law and government in areas of Mexico. Go read the whole article. And then consider the Obama Administration’s laser focus on this issue.

Now consider this article by Dan Gerstein over at Forbes.com:

[In the opinions of the people Gerstein talked with, US Treasury Sec'y Tim] Geithner has been a terrible political salesman–at a time when instilling confidence is an essential part of his job. For some–more often political people than finance types–this could eventually become fatal. . . . Nearly everyone started from the same sympathetic vantage point: The Treasury secretary has the hardest job in the world right now. . . . Nevertheless, many [of the people] I heard from seriously questioned whether Geithner was the right man for this largely political task. By far the most common complaint was that Geithner has yet to show he has what it takes to instill confidence in the markets and on Main Street and build the political support to do what’s necessary to stabilize our financial system. . . . One leading communications adviser said Geithner is “apparently incapable of articulating the problems and the solutions. He comes across as weak and lacking confidence–exactly the opposite of what we need.” This [person] went so far as to suggest that Geithner think about resigning at some point because “[his] problems are not fixable.”

And so on. The kicker: these are all Democrats talking to Gerstein.

Look on the bright side: here are eight financial analysts who are optimistic about the future.

I recently re-read Robert Heinlein’s classic The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, which (IMHO) is his masterpiece and one of the finest novels of the 20th Century.  The novel came to mind when I read this story about China:

The grass-mud horse is an example of something that, in China’s authoritarian system, passes as subversive behavior. Conceived as an impish protest against censorship, the foul-named little horse has not merely made government censors look ridiculous, although it has surely done that.

It has also raised real questions about China’s ability to stanch the flow of information over the Internet — a project on which the Chinese government already has expended untold riches, and written countless software algorithms to weed deviant thought from the world’s largest cyber-community.

Government computers scan Chinese cyberspace constantly, hunting for words and phrases that censors have dubbed inflammatory or seditious. When they find one, the offending blog or chat can be blocked within minutes.

Xiao Qiang, an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, who oversees a project that monitors Chinese Web sites, said in an e-mail message that the grass-mud horse “has become an icon of resistance to censorship.”

Heh. Calling Simon Jester! Calling Simon Jester! And if you want to know what the foul name actually is, check with the experts at Language Log.

Boy, talk about a blast from the past:

One of my favorite ads as a kid, and I was remembering the dialog about 3 seconds ahead of hearing it. Hat tip to James Lileks at the Bleat.

This chart gets worse each time it’s updated (hat tip to Gateway Pundit):

We're all doomed

And speaking of another blast from the past:

For the Clinton Administration, it’s time to regroup and refocus. The White House seems to have dissipated the good will and political capital built up with the unveiling of Clinton’s long-term economic program. Initially, the President’s courage in looking the deficit monster in the eye, after years of Washington denial, was refreshing. His promise to pare government spending, however modest, was welcomed. An inspired State of the Union address helped boost the President’s poll standings and win congressional passage of his budget resolution in record time.

But now, Clinton’s economic strategy is in serious trouble. The stunning Republican defeat of his stimulus package calls into question the President’s leadership. Health-care reform, wrapped in secrecy, appears to be growing in size and expense. Early business supporters now cower under the drumbeat of new taxes, regulations, and mandates that emanate from every corner of the Administration, from Health & Human Services to the Labor Dept.

What’s wrong? The President has lost his focus. In his first 100 days, Clinton unveiled proposals on gays in the military, abortion rights, the environment, national service, school and labor-law reforms. All the while, his health-care planners were cobbling together a sweeping package that could cost up to $150 billion and require a broad new array of taxes. (Business Week, 5/10/1993)

Possible wars of the future (hat tip to Futuristic):

• The Great Siberian War Of 2030
• The Revival Of Chinese Nationalism: Challenges To American Ideals
• The Future Of Undersea Warfare
• Chinese And Russian Asymmetrical Strategies For Space Dominance (2010-2030)

Headline of the day: “Precision measurement of W boson mass portends stricter limits for Higgs particle.” Glad we’ve got that settled.

The inexorable gravity of economic reality comes to Google:

The accountants have taken over the Googleplex, once a hotbed of amiably unprofitable innovation. The notion that ads would pay the way for everything has been dropped — and “fee” is replacing “free.”

The inexorable gravity of economic reality also comes to Lex Luthor (hat tip to io9.com):

Finally, the Onion sets up the next big blockbuster movie:

Experts Agree Giant, Razor-Clawed Bioengineered Crabs Pose No Threat

Time to go earn my keep, since I can’t keep my earnings.  ..bruce w..

Swap the genders of the two people in the Wondermark strip below, and you’ll capture the essence of many conversations that Sandra and I have had over the years (click on the strip to go to the full-sized original):

The difference being, of course, that Sandra and I started out together with nine kids, adding in our semi-adopted daughter Jeni along the way.

The books? We’re up to roughly 3000 now. And the kids are all gone, so yes, the books are for me.   ..bruce w..

When Capers Jones published Assessment and Control of Software Risks (Yourdon Press, 1994), he identified the most serious software risk in IT projects as “Inaccurate Metrics,” and the second most serious software risk as “Inadequate Measurement”.  I remember being startled when I first read that back in 1995—they certainly weren’t what I would have chosen—and other authorities in the field criticized his choices. Yet, in the intervening years, I have moved closer and closer to Jones’ point of view.

Check it out, and please feel free to Digg it, Slashdot it, etc.   ..bruce w..

Anyway, one of the widgets on my iGoogle page links me to a different American short story every day, and today it served up “The Colour Out of Space” by H. P. Lovecraft. If you’ve ever wanted to read a Lovecraft story, this is a great place to start:

West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. On the gentle slopes there are farms, ancient and rocky, with squat, moss-coated cottages brooding eternally over old New England secrets in the lee of great ledges; but these are all vacant now, the wide chimneys crumbling and the shingled sides bulging perilously beneath low gambrel roofs.

The old folk have gone away, and foreigners do not like to live there. French-Canadians have tried it, Italians have tried it, and the Poles have come and departed. It is not because of anything that can be seen or heard or handled, but because of something that is imagined. The place is not good for imagination, and does not bring restful dreams at night. It must be this which keeps the foreigners away, for old Ammi Pierce has never told them of anything he recalls from the strange days. Ammi, whose head has been a little queer for years, is the only one who still remains, or who ever talks of the strange days; and he dares to do this because his house is so near the open fields and the travelled roads around Arkham.

There was once a road over the hills and through the valleys, that ran straight where the blasted heath is now; but people ceased to use it and a new road was laid curving far toward the south. Traces of the old one can still be found amidst the weeds of a returning wilderness, and some of them will doubtless linger even when half the hollows are flooded for the new reservoir. Then the dark woods will be cut down and the blasted heath will slumber far below blue waters whose surface will mirror the sky and ripple in the sun. And the secrets of the strange days will be one with the deep’s secrets; one with the hidden lore of old ocean, and all the mystery of primal earth.

When I went into the hills and vales to survey for the new reservoir they told me the place was evil. They told me this in Arkham, and because that is a very old town full of witch legends I thought the evil must he something which grandams had whispered to children through centuries. The name “blasted heath” seemed to me very odd and theatrical, and I wondered how it had come into the folklore of a Puritan people. Then I saw that dark westward tangle of glens and slopes for myself, end ceased to wonder at anything beside its own elder mystery. It was morning when I saw it, but shadow lurked always there. The trees grew too thickly, and their trunks were too big for any healthy New England wood. There was too much silence in the dim alleys between them, and the floor was too soft with the dank moss and mattings of infinite years of decay.

A major part of Lovecraft’s genius was creating a a common backdrop and set of references (commonly called the “Cthulhu Mythos“) for many of his stories and novels. This, of course, is routinely done today, particularly in science fiction, fantasy, and horror works. But I really believe that Lovecraft pioneered the concept, and it is a tribute to his inventiveness that dozens (if not hundreds) of other authors have written stories set in the Cthulhu Mythos or have worked references from it into their own stories.

Enjoy! ..bruce w..

P.S. If you’re already a Lovecraft fan, be sure to buy a copy of “A Shoggoth on the Roof” from the HPLHS, a brilliant and very professional Lovecraftian parody of “A Fiddler on the Roof”.

My response is that Bradbury doesn’t belong in that group for two critical reasons.

First, Bradbury doesn’t belong in the Big Three because (in my opinion) he transcends science fiction and fantasy. Bradbury is a poet who happens to write mostly in prose and tends to use SF/F trappings in his writings. He is also one of the finest English-language authors of the 20th century. The only reason he hasn’t gotten more “official” recognition — though he’s gotten quite a bit — is because (much like Jack Vance) he used those SF/F trappings so heavily, though Bradbury has been punished less for doing so than Vance has. Lumping Bradbury in with Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein is a bit like lumping Jane Austin (whom I believe to be the finest English novelist ever) in with Daniel Defoe.

Second, I’m not sure I’ve ever met, talked to, or read of an engineer or scientist who was inspired to become such because of something Bradbury wrote. I’m not saying they’re not out there — I just think it’s a very small number, especially when compared to Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein.

So please don’t take my posting on Clarke to somehow be a slight on Bradbury. Far from it. ..bruce webster..