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4. Marie Burns
Fort Myers, Florida
April 16th, 2011
10:48 pm
That Paul Ryan thinks "Atlas Shrugged" is worth reading (and wasting staff time on) tells you all you need to know about him. He is a non-intellectual lightweight who thinks Ayn Rand's dreadful, fascistic romance novel makes for a good lesson in social engineering and economics.
Evidently, Ryan didn't notice that reliance on Rand's ridiculous thesis was what got the "brilliant" Alan Greenspan into trouble. Greenspan, according to his 2008 Congressional testimony, had NO IDEA bankers would be greedy. He said, "Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder's equity -- myself especially -- are in a state of shocked disbelief." That is, Greenspan didn't understand something as simple as the nature of little twerps who take jobs on Wall Street -- they're greedy. But then, Ayn Rand hadn't told him that businesspeople were greedy.
If you liked the financial meltdown of 2008 -- brought to you by the Greenspan/Rand School of Socioeconomics, you'll love Paul Ryan's budget, which assumes that rich people will use their money for good purposes, that they will not send their money offshore as they are doing today, that they will plow it back into the U.S. economy as they are not doing today, and all the "little people" will get good jobs. As fellow-Republican Rick Santorum explained Ryan's tax policy in New Hampshire this past week, "Why punish the most productive people? The people who have resources [money] create jobs, not poor people."
Never mind the history of corporate greed and wealth-hoarding. Never mind plain common sense. Paul Ryan bases his "Path to Disparity" on a dull, foolish and badly-written pop novel. He can be pitied, ridiculed or ignored, but he cannot be taken seriously.
The Constant Weader at www.RealityChex.com
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7. Karen Garcia
New Paltz, NY
April 16th, 2011
10:48 pm
I would love to see a movie based on the life of Ayn Rand. Helen Mirren did play her in a made-for-cable biopic about ten years ago, but that film was pure fiction. For one thing, it portrayed her as a human being. It was panned by the critics for being a cheap skin-flick about the chain-smoking Rand's torrid affair with a younger man, around Paul Ryan's age at the time.
But maybe Helen could reprise the role in a more realistic way the second time around. She could be portrayed testifying against her colleagues before the House Un-American Affairs Committee in the 50s. Then, she could be shown applying for and getting Social Security and Medicare when she was diagnosed with lung cancer. (This factoid recently came to light via a Freedom of Information Act request).
"I took government welfare only because it was in my own self-interest to do so," the impassioned Ayn would rasp as the movie fades to black. Paul Ryan might even get a cameo role, since he will have plenty of time on his hands after the 2012 elections. As others have cannily noted, Ryan is an anagram for Ayn R. And they never told us this, but TARP really stands for The Ayn Rand Program for troubled capitalists.
kmgarcia2000.blogspot.com
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