Senator Dick Durbin Says to Put Down Ayn Rand's Books

Senator Dick Durbin of the Democrat Socialist Party of the highly indebted state of Illinois, has told Senate Republicans to put down their Ayn Rand books and get to work on the socialist agenda, including perpetual unemployment insurance payouts.  He claims that if Republicans want to help the public, they should vote to take money by force from those who are working and give it to those who have largely stopped looking for work.  We know that many have stopped looking for work because Big Government has so degraded the economy with endless similar takings of income and wealth that private sector job creators have largely stopped creating jobs.  Labor force participation is the lowest it has been since that great failed Democrat Jimmy Carter was in the White House.  Durbin's solution is to take still more money by force from those who are working and give it to those who are not!

Durbin's solution is immoral, as Ayn Rand most ably made evident to rational thinkers who have read her books despite the vilification of collectivists.  Durbin's solution has been the modus operandi throughout this never-ending Great Socialist Recession, now starting its seventh year and likely to continue for at least one year after Obama has retired.  We can expect a 10-year recession due to such continuous nonsense as Durbin is backing.  So, any rational observer can clearly see that the Democrat Socialist Party solutions do not solve the problem, but instead are the problem.  It is always interesting to observe that extended attempts to ignore morality always end in disasters, such as this great American Lost Decade.  But then, as Ayn Rand said, one needs a moral code in order to assure one's survival and in order to flourish in life.  In other words, the practical man is a moral man and a moral man is a practical man.  Those who believe it is practical not to be moral are horribly mistaken.  So do read Ayn Rand.

Dick Durbin has never created more jobs than those of a small law practice in Springfield, Illinois, which he started after passing the bar in late 1969.  He mostly ran his private practice as a sideline while working for the Illinois legislature and running for offices in losing campaigns until he finally became a Representative in 1982.  One of his winning campaign issues was that he would solve unemployment problems.  He has yet to figure out how that is done.

It is a strange thing that so many people are now helpless to find work when most people were once capable of creating their own jobs in America.  Apparently for many Americans that enterprising spirit is dead.  Perhaps that is the main problem with employment today.

Does a loving Father tell his children that he does not care whether they learn to read and write or not?  Does he tell his children that they need not bother to learn to add, subtract, multiply, and divide numbers?  Does he tell them they are not to have chores to do, so that they will be happier?  Does he say that he does not care what they will do with their lives because he will always take good care of them?  No, he pushes his children to learn the skills they will need to take good care of themselves.  Yet Dick Durbin is telling us that we should not care about the effort our children make, we should without reservation promise to always care for them.  Well, as any good parent knows, you have to make demands of your children.  You have to raise them so that they will understand the need for work and the pleasures that being a competent worker provide.  If you are a loving parent, you push your children to become competent in managing their own lives and in choosing their own values.  You teach them the morals and the many skills they will need to live well.  You teach them that pride and happiness are well-earned when they abide by their morality and manage their lives well.

If this is the path we follow with those whom we love best, then how is it that anyone can entertain Dick Durbin's claims that it is better to treat your fellow Americans the way a poor parent would raise a spoiled brat with no hope of ever becoming a real adult?  How can it be wise to take the advice of such a fool then to put down Ayn Rand's books?

So, visit the Atlas Society and read about Ayn Rand's ideas if you have not.  Then buy her books and read them carefully.  Think deeply about all you know about life and evaluate her ideas as objectively as you can.  It is the practical and moral thing to do!  It will also be a most appropriate reply to the self-destructive and wrongheaded advice of Senator Dick Durbin.

Fraud in Unemployment Claims by State

Fraud is rampant in virtually every federal and state welfare program.  The extent to which the government has been able to determine what it is in unemployment insurance benefits is revealed in the map below:

This may be just the tip of the iceberg, with most of the fraud undiscovered.  Apparently, the highest discovered fraud was in Louisiana, though Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maine, Virginia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi are all made more than 14% fraudulent payments.  In Louisiana's case, the fraudulent payments were a colossal 38.67% of all payments.  Taking advantage of government programs and taxpayers has long been developed into a fine art in Louisiana.

There are many people who have no compunction about stealing money from the businesses whose only crime is to take the many risks of being in business to produce needed goods and services and of hiring people to work for them.  What is more, as a businessman, I am sure that Congress and virtually every state legislature believes I am guilty of a crime because I actually take the many risks of hiring people.  They penalize me with many taxes and most of them do not even depend upon whether my business is making a profit or whether I am able to pay myself for my many hours of work.  Quite a few of which I am required by innumerable laws and regulations to donate to local, state, and the federal government totally without recompense.  That is what you do to criminals -- you punish them.  It makes one wonder why anyone is fool enough to own a business.

Perhaps all businessmen should quite hiring others and only provide themselves with a job.  That sure would go a long way toward reforming government!  Can you imagine the howl if every taxpayer was required to file his own payroll taxes to the state and the federal government?  There would be no unemployment taxes to provide unemployment benefits.  Everyone would have to generate their own W-2 forms and send them to the governments.  Everyone would be required to provide their own Workmen's Compensation Insurance.  Everyone would have more complex personal income tax filings.  Everyone would have to pay taxes on any business facility and equipment they used to generate their income.  Everyone would have to run equipment depreciation schedules and do the personal property tax filings.  Oh, what a plaintive howl there would be!  Government would become much smaller very quickly and many taxes now hidden from the employee dominated public would become known and hated.

Obama Wants Bigger Government on Top of This?

From his State of the Union address, it could not be more clear that Obama wants a much bigger government with much more spending and much more control over our lives.  He wants to impose this further growth upon the already unbelievable increases in government spending since 2002 as shown in this great graphic from the current issue of the magazine of the National Federation of Independent Businesses:

Of course there is no limit to the extraction of money, time, and other resources from the private sector for the use of the government sector in this fool's mind.  All of these programs have grown much faster than real, per capita income has in that time.  This has been especially true during the four years Obama has occupied the White House.  This is a huge problem he simply does not recognize, which means he is either incredibly dumb or incredibly evil.