Category Archives: Atlas Shrugged

Buster Posey didn't move.

The Nationals' Bryce Harper charged the mound Monday after getting hit by Giants reliever Hunter Strickland, and Posey stood motionless behind the plate rather than defend his pitcher, jogging toward the melee only after Harper threw his helmet and punches started to fly.

My initial thought was that Posey, the Giants' catcher, was the sanest man on the field. But I knew that some players might see it differently, believing that teammates should always stand up for each other. And when I texted one Giants player afterward to ask his opinion of Posey's evident indifference, he summed up his conflicting emotions perfectly.

I don't know, he said. I really don't know.

Strickland acted foolishly with his seeming retaliation for the two home runs that Harper hit off him in the 2014 Division Series. Harper, who was hit on the hip, not anywhere near the head, could have laughed at Strickland on his way to first basethough that is easy for a casual observer to say; it's different, always different, in the heat of the moment.

Posey's failure to attempt to restrain Harper, though, is the greatest curiosity, one that is likely to spur debate about the Giants' franchise player and one of the game's great role models.

The former MVP's seeming disavowal of Strickland evoked the recent memory of Dustin Pedroia's it wasn't me response to Manny Machado after the Red Sox's Matt Barnes threw at Machado's head. Each of these on-field incidents, though, is different. The Pedroia-Machado exchange happened after the fact. Posey's Atlas Shrugged moment occurred in real time.

Brian Gorman, the plate umpire, reached the mound much quicker than Posey, who stood at his position for a good five seconds before finally moving. Posey's body language suggested that he was exasperated with Strickland. He had every right to be exasperated with Strickland. And he told reporters afterward that his recent concussions were not the reason for his inaction.

Many fans, reporters and even some in the game believe that all of this needs to stop, that pitchers need to stop throwing at hitters, that the risk of injury either from the ball that is thrown or any subsequent brawlis simply too great. But a good number of players, perhaps even a majority, would oppose a ban on such conduct, believing that they need an outlet to police themselves.

It's easy to say those players are wrong, just as it's easy to say that some were wrong to oppose new rules that were designed to enhance safety at home plate and at second base. Major League Baseball needs to be sensitive to player concerns, understand that the game cannot be completely legislated from Park Avenue. But as I've written before, if players are going to apply unwritten rules, then at least execute them properly or maybe lose the privilege, once and for all.

Strickland aimed his pitch at the right part of Harper's body; the problem was, he had no good reason to hit Harper in the first place, and put Posey in jeopardy if the Nationals decide to retaliate in kind. So the reliever's act, too, was a distortion of the unwritten rules. And Strickland, even after triggering the ugliness, would not calm down. It took three Giants Hunter Pence, George Kontos and Mac Williamson to drag the pitcher into the dugout.

The Giants, winners of three World Series between 2010 and '14, are in unfamiliar territorynine games under .500, 11 games out of first place. Posey twice has been caught on camera expressing his frustration with first baseman Brandon Belt. And perhaps Monday's madness was, in some ways, another sign of the team's overall frustration, though Strickland probably does not deserve such a sympathetic view.

Posey was in an uncomfortable position in the moment. He is in an uncomfortable position in the aftermath. What that means for Strickland's future with the cluband the rest of the Giants' seasonremains to be seen.

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There's very few things I can add to all that have been said about "Atlas Shrugged" that haven't been said before. Ayn Rand wrote a timeless masterpiece who put her name across the most influential writers of the english language. The story by itself is an Ode to the Human Mind and the best within us. This book change the lives of those who enter in contact with it and, most of the time, for the better.

The production of this audiobook is perfect. There's no background noise and the sound is as crisp as it could be. Only on the technical standpoint, the recording is as perfect as the state of the technology allows it to be.

So, why I gave it only 3 stars? Because of the casting of Mr. Brick. I have no quarrel with him. He's a talented artist who, I am sure, would give an outstanding reading of "Pride and Prejudice". He's, sadly, a poor choice for "Atlas Shrugged". His voice is unable to carry the certainty of John Galt, Dagny Taggart seems to be a moment away to sobbing, Francisco d'Anconia got a mundane voice while Jim Taggart sounds perfectly sane(!). This mostly ruined my enjoyment of this recording. "Atlas Shrugged" is a righteous book and his voice is too mellow to sound right.

In summary, may I suggest to those who really want to enjoy this story that they acquire the Christopher Hurt's rendition of it? The quality is less than stellar but the reading is perfect. In fact, I listened to the later right after I listened Mr. Brick's recording, just to forget the poor experience I lived.

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Atlas Shrugged Audiobook | Audible.com

Poor ol Paul Ryan. For a few brief hourson 27 January, a week after the inauguration of Donald Trump, the Wikipedia entry for invertebrates which defines them as animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column(commonly known as a backbone or spine) was amended to include a smiling picture of the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives.

The online prank reflected a growing consensus among critics of Ryan: confronted by a boorish and authoritarian president plagued by multiple conflicts of interest, the House Speaker has behaved in a craven and spineless manner. Ryan, goes the conventional wisdom, is a coward.

Yet as is so often the case, the conventional wisdom is wrong. Ryans deafening silence over Trumps egregious excesses has little to do with pusillanimity. Its much worse than that. The House Speaker is not acoward; he is a shameless opportunist. Hisrefusal to condemn Trump is not caused by terror or fear; rather, it is a cynical,self-serving tactic.

Long before Trump arrived on the scene with his wacky birther conspiracies, Ryan was the undisputed star of the GOP; the earnest, number-crunching wunderkind of the right. He was elected to Congress in 1998, aged 28; by 2011, he was head of the House budget committee; by 2012, he was Mitt Romneys running mate; by 2015, he was Speaker of the House and third in line for the presidency at the grand old age of 45.

The Wisconsin congressman has been hailed in the conservative media as the man with a plan, the intellectual leader of the Republican Party, the conscience of the GOP. Yet, again and again, in recent years, he has been singularly unsuccessful in enacting his legislative agenda.

And what kind of agenda might that be? Why, an Ayn Rand-inspired agenda, of course. You know Rand, right? The hero ofmodern-day libertarians, self-described radical for capitalism and author of the dystopian novel Atlas Shrugged. As one of her acolytes wrote to her: You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: you are inferior and all the improvements in your condition which yousimply take for granted you owe to the effort of men who are better than you.

Ryan is an ideologue who insists on giving copies of Atlas Shrugged to interns in his congressional office. In 2005 he told a gathering of Rand fans, called the Atlas Society, that the reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.

Rolling back the evil state while balancing the budget on the backs of the feckless poor, in true Randian fashion, has always been Ryans primary goal. Even Newt Gingrich, who served as Republican House Speaker for five years in the 1990s, once decried Ryans proposals to privatise Medicare the popular federal health insurance programme that covers people over the age of 65 as right-wing social engineering.

These days, Ryan has a useful idiot in the White House to help him pull off the right-wing social engineering that he couldnt pull off on his own. Trump, who doesnt do detail or policy, is content, perhaps even keen, to outsource his domestic agenda to the policy wonk from Wisconsin.

The Speaker has made his deal with the devil: a reckless and racist demagogue, possibly in cahoots with Russia, can trample over the law, erode US democratic norms and embarrass the country, and the party, at home and abroad. And in return? Ryan gets top-rate tax cuts. To hell with theconstitution.

Trump, lest we forget, ran as an insurgent against the Republican establishment during the primaries, loudly breaking with hard-right GOP orthodoxy on issues such as infrastructure spending (Trump promised more), health-care reform (Trump promised coverage for all) and Medicaid (Trump promised no cuts). It was all a charade, a con. And Ryan knew it. The Speaker may have been slow to endorse Trump but when he did so, last June, he made it clear that on the issues that make up our agenda, we have more common ground thandisagreement.

A year later, Ryan has been vindicated: free trade deals aside, Trump is governing as a pretty conventional, hard-right conservative. Consider the first important budget proposal from the Trump administration, published on 23 May. For Ryan, its a Randian dream come true: $800bn slashed from Medicaid, which provides health care to low-income Americans, plus swingeing cuts to Snap (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programme, aka food stamps), Chip (the Childrens Health Insurance Programme) and SSDI (disability insurance).

In Trump, Ryan and his fellow anti-government hardliners in Congress have found the perfect frontman to enact their reverse-Robin Hood economic agenda: a self-declared, rhetorical champion of white, working-class voters whose actual Ryan-esque policies on tax cuts, health care, Wall Street regulation and the rest bolster only the billionaire class at their expense.

Dont be distracted by all thescandals: the president has been busy using his tiny hands to sign a wide array of bills, executive orders and judicial appointments that have warmed the cold hearts of the Republican hard right.

Impeachment, therefore, remains a liberal fantasy despite everything were discovering about Russia, Michael Flynn, James Comey and the rest. Does anyone seriously expect this Republican-dominated House of Representatives to bring articles of impeachment against Trump? With Paul Ryan in charge of it? Dont. Be. Silly.

Mehdi Hasan is a broadcaster and New Statesman contributing editor. He is based inWashington, DC

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How Emmanuel Macron's sensitive masculinity turned him into politics' Modern Man - New Statesman

Over the last decade, many influential people have wondered whether Big Tech and democracy can coexist. They have included Stanford legal scholar Nathaniel Persily, distinguished journalist Thomas Edsall, and Robert Reich, who served as secretary of labor under President Clinton.

The latest take on the issue is an engaging book by Jonathan Taplin, former director of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California and, in earlier manifestations, tour manager for Bob Dylan and a film producer for Martin Scorsese. The subtitle conveys a quick overview: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy.

Move fast and break things Taplins title was, at least until 2014, the corporate philosophy of Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg. Taplin interprets that philosophy liberally and applies it to several Big Tech moguls, especially PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel; Google co-founder Larry Page; Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. In its original use, the phrase described the rapid deployment of innovative software projects. But to Taplin, it means something much darker: to replace all the failing systems of society with technological systems controlled by benevolent billionaires.

He reports, accurately, that Google now dominates five of the six billion-user online markets browsers, video, mobile, search and maps and that Facebook dominates the only other such market social media. He also asserts that some of the Big Tech execs have megalomaniacal ideas about the duty they have to save the world while becoming even more obscenely rich, much like the supermen they admire in Ayn Rands Atlas Shrugged.

But Taplin seems unaware of the immense powers these new supermen are actually wielding. Since 2013, my research team and I have been studying new forms of influence the Internet has made possible that are unprecedented in human history. We have not been studying fake news, which is a very visible and old form of influence that mainly serves to confirm the beliefs people already have. And no, we have not been studying how negative messages can spread like wildfire through social interactions also a very old and visible form of influence.

The impact of such mechanisms is trivial compared with the new techniques, such as the Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME), which Taplin mentions. Ronald Robertson and I discovered SEME in 2013, showing that biased search results can invisibly shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by between 20 and 80 percent. But SEME is only one of four powerful new forms of influence my colleagues and I have discovered in recent years, and Im sure there are others, with new ones coming soon. New forms of influence like SEME are now affecting the decisions of billions of people every day without their knowledge.

The Big Tech oligarchs are well aware of their new powers. As Googles Eric Schmidt said onstage a few days after the November 2016 election, How people get their information, what they believe, what they dont, is, I think, the project for the next decade (click here for the video). And evidence is mounting that they are actually using these tools.

As we recently reported, in 2016, Robertson and I recruited a Nielsen-type network of field agents who allowed us to track their election-related searches for nearly six months before Election Day. Based on the 13,207 searches and 98,044 web pages we captured using this new monitoring system, we found that Googles search results were biased toward Hillary ClintonHillary Rodham ClintonWhy do both Democrats and Republicans suffer from misogyny? Katy Perry following Ivanka Trump, Ann Coulter on Twitter Chelsea Clinton: We all have a responsibility to not stay silent now MORE in all ten of the top search results over most of this period enough, perhaps, to have invisibly shifted more than two million votes.

Im now working with colleagues from Princeton, Stanford and elsewhere to expand the monitoring system so the manipulative shenanigans of Big Tech companies can be continuously monitored on a large scale. Exposing online manipulations might finally force Big Tech companies to be accountable to the public and might even save democracy.

This brings me to my one gripe about Taplins book. Toward the end of this disturbing tale of greedy billionaires, he finally gets to his solutions: Facebook and Google, he says, must alter their business model, although he has no idea how to make this happen. Anyway, he says, maybe we can build a parallel structure of nonprofit distribution cooperatives that will once again allow creative artists to earn a decent living.

Seriously. Thats it. Thats how this illuminating book ends. Whatever happened to saving democracy?

To Mr. Taplin I say: How about joining my colleagues and me in building a worldwide monitoring system that will force Big Tech companies, now and in the future, to behave responsibly?

Robert Epstein (@DrREpstein) is senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology in Vista, California. He holds a PhD from Harvard University, and has published fifteen books on artificial intelligence and other topics. He is also the former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.

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Is it still possible to stop 'Big Tech' from killing democracy? - The Hill (blog)

The Fountainhead, part 1, chapter 7

While Roark is out on a job site, he takes an interest in one of the men working on the building under construction:

The man raised his head and turned to him abruptly. He had a big head and a face so ugly that it became fascinating; it was neither old nor flabby, but it was creased in deep gashes and the powerful jowls drooped like a bulldogs; the eyes were startling wide, round and china-blue.

Unlike the view she later espoused in Atlas Shrugged, in this book Rand implies that a person can be competent without being devastatingly handsome. Thats more realistic, which is nice. But even here, she apparently couldnt resist the temptation to equate blue eyes with Good.

The worker is trying to bend pipes around a support beam, an arduous task. Roark suggests that he save himself the trouble by cutting a hole in the beam and running the conduits straight through. The worker is scornful of the idea, telling him, Run along, punk. We dont like college smarties around here so Roark offers to do the job himself:

Roark took the mans gloves and goggles, took the acetylene torch, knelt, and sent a thin jet of blue fire at the center of the beam. The man stood watching him. Roarks arm was steady, holding the tense, hissing streak of flame in leash, shuddering faintly with its violence, but holding it aimed straight.

Impressed, the worker asks him where he learned to do that. An amused Roark replies, Ive been an electrician, and a plumber, and a rivet catcher, and many other things. (This is an early echo of the view later espoused in Atlas that if you own a company, it must mean youre able to do any job that anyone in that company does.)

The mans name is Mike, and once hes introduced himself to Roark, the two of them strike up a conversation. Mike apologizes for misjudging him, saying that he despises architects as office boys who only know pretty pictures and tea parties, and Roark is the first one hes met whos different. Roark says, If youre apologizing, dont. I dont like them either.

Just to note in passing, this contradicts what Roark said to Keating when he claimed not to hate him. Rand asserts that Roark isnt actively malicious toward other people, just indifferent to them. But this line undermines that claim.

Roark agrees to go out for a beer with Mike, an offer he refused with Keating:

They sat together at a table in the corner of a basement speakeasy, and they drank beer, and Mike related his favorite tale of how he had fallen five stories when a scaffolding gave way under him, how he had broken three ribs but lived to tell it he owned a set of tools and an ancient Ford, and existed for the sole purpose of traveling around the country from one big construction job to another. People meant very little to Mike, but their performance a great deal. He worshipped expertness of any kind His view of the world was simple: there were the able and there were the incompetent; he was not concerned with the latter.

No surprise that Mike has the binary worldview of the stereotypical Randian character, dividing humanity into the productive class and the worthless moochers (and of course his dividing line is exactly the same as Roarks; many real-life groups that want to partition humanity in a similar way wouldnt agree on what the criterion of worthiness is).

But lets talk for a moment about Mikes favorite tale, of falling five stories and living to tell about it, and what it says about the working conditions hes used to. (Obviously he wasnt seriously hurt, since he shares the same virtual immunity to injury as all other Ayn Rand protagonists.)

The famous Lunch Atop a Skyscraper photograph, though it was probably staged, was a true representation of the extreme danger and lackadaisical attitude toward safety that prevailed in the 1920s and 30s. In the first era of high-rise construction, before safety features like harnesses and nets were mandated by law, the workers who built New Yorks skyline flirted with death every day.

Its hard to be certain how many early construction workers died on the job, because business owners didnt have to keep records and because it wasnt considered an exceptional event. But the estimates paint a grim portrait:

Early ironwork, without hard hats or lanyards or numerous other modern safety measures, was a rapacious killer. In 1907, as many as one in seven men died on the job. We do not die, an early motto went. We are killed.

Another site estimates that two out of five died or became disabled. Thats a cost worth remembering, whenever you gaze at that majestic Manhattan skyline that Ayn Rand loved so much.

Even today, despite modern safety precautions, construction workers in the U.S. die on the job at a rate almost three times that of other industries mostly from falls. And conditions are far worse in developing countries like Qatar, where foreign migrant workers labor in brutal conditions and are treated as callously as if they were disposable parts.

None of this seems to matter very much to Ayn Rand. As you can infer from Mikes attitude, she treats on-the-job hazards as something to be endured, like weather, not something that can or should be changed. As in her later works, the narrative spotlight rests firmly on her Great Men and their creative minds. The people who labor to actually make that vision a reality are out of focus. At best, theyre an afterthought.

Unlike Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead doesnt try to present Rands entire economic and political philosophy. You might argue that the treatment of workers isnt the point of the novel. Even so, given how intimately its concerned with architecture and construction, you might expect it would come up, even if only in passing.

Given that Rand wants us to believe Roark has the common touch, it would be a noble gesture for him to acknowledge the sacrifices of the workers who erect his towering skyscrapers. It wouldve been an opportunity to show how much better a builder he is by showing that he treats the people at his job sites better than the villains do. As it is, the novel appears to be sending the message that Roark is only concerned with the well-being of the workers whose political views exactly mirror his own.

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The Fountainhead: Hard Hat Zone - Patheos (blog)

The Hindu

'I hate the internet' The Hindu In a hilarious parody of the climax of Ayn Rand's libertarian novel Atlas Shrugged, standing on top of a hill, the protagonist howls: I know what the internet was like before people used it to make money. I am the only literary writer in America with ...

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'I hate the internet' - The Hindu

William White | Special to the Daily News

For decades our Libertarian leaning Daily News, really our only local paper, sat dutifully in my driveway. Like most media, clearly tilted toward its customers. The Reagan/Thatcher team found ample comfort here claiming government was the problem. Odd, considering our huge government attachment!

Then Libertarian ideas took hold, moving Southerners into the Republican column. Where they remain. Paradoxically Red States with their social/financial shortcomings would appear most in need of government props. Not overlooking sea to shining sea DoD dependence. Okaloosans? Obviously.

Perhaps the parallels to socialism are obvious, uniformed and otherwise. Still the religion-like lure of Libertarianism runs deep here. Even within the federal government itself. Secretary Tillerson, Speaker Ryan, Congressman Paul, son Senator Rand Paul. All devotees of trickle down economics. Such thinking directly traceable to economist Milton Friedman and the Chicago School. Not to overlook the Feds keeper for many years, Allan Greenspan. Understandably left sobbing by the fall of 08! Incidentally Greenspan was a contemporary and disciple of Ayn Rand herself.

Ayn who?

What college freshman hasnt cut his teeth on Rands 1184 page tome Atlas Shrugged? Even non-prolific reader Donald Trump admires her book Fountainhead. Rands work, put to music, could well be the theme for todays often shady Tea Party itself.

Ayn who?

Born Alisa Zinov Rossenbaum in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1905, Rands family was brought to ruin by incoming socialists replacing the Czar. This hatred of anything collective would remain with her until her death in California in 1982. Strangely, this lifelong atheist has now experienced re-birth in the U.S., even among Christian evangelicals!

Part of her huge writing output included a philosophy which she termed Objectivism. Much like the Bible, exhaustingly prone to interpretation. Heres the gist of it, in Rands own words:

Man exists for his own sake, that the pursuit of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose, and that he must not sacrifice himself to others, nor sacrifice others to himself. In Atlas Shrugged the message revolves around capitalist genius John Galt who engineers strikes by men of talent (job creators?) to withdraw their genius, letting the world wind down. Thus removing the motor. Lesson being, only the truly capable must run the world. The rest dine on their crumbs. No collectivist she! Let the devil take the hindmost.

Yet government remains the only tool capable of withstanding the pressures of wealth, unless morphed into a bought and sold Plutocracy. Ironically, technology can now provide actual, direct government participation by citizens. Nine of the top 10 nations most pleased with life, function just fine with social-democratic foundations. So critical as workers worldwide either lack work, consider their jobs threatened by shrinking salaries or digitized automation. Anger and fear giving power brokers much populist leverage. Yet solutions can hardly exist within the endless striving for production, profit and ceaseless consumerism pillaging our planet! Rand should remain in her grave.

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This guest column was written by William White, who is a resident of Fort Walton Beach.

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GUEST COLUMN: Ayn Rand should remain in her grave - The Northwest Florida Daily News

Poor ol Paul Ryan. For a few brief hourson 27 January, a week after the inauguration of Donald Trump, the Wikipedia entry for invertebrates which defines them as animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column(commonly known as a backbone or spine) was amended to include a smiling picture of the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives.

The online prank reflected a growing consensus among critics of Ryan: confronted by a boorish and authoritarian president plagued by multiple conflicts of interest, the House Speaker has behaved in a craven and spineless manner. Ryan, goes the conventional wisdom, is a coward.

Yet as is so often the case, the conventional wisdom is wrong. Ryans deafening silence over Trumps egregious excesses has little to do with pusillanimity. Its much worse than that. The House Speaker is not acoward; he is a shameless opportunist. Hisrefusal to condemn Trump is not caused by terror or fear; rather, it is a cynical,self-serving tactic.

Long before Trump arrived on the scene with his wacky birther conspiracies, Ryan was the undisputed star of the GOP; the earnest, number-crunching wunderkind of the right. He was elected to Congress in 1998, aged 28; by 2011, he was head of the House budget committee; by 2012, he was Mitt Romneys running mate; by 2015, he was Speaker of the House and third in line for the presidency at the grand old age of 45.

The Wisconsin congressman has been hailed in the conservative media as the man with a plan, the intellectual leader of the Republican Party, the conscience of the GOP. Yet, again and again, in recent years, he has been singularly unsuccessful in enacting his legislative agenda.

And what kind of agenda might that be? Why, an Ayn Rand-inspired agenda, of course. You know Rand, right? The hero ofmodern-day libertarians, self-described radical for capitalism and author of the dystopian novel Atlas Shrugged. As one of her acolytes wrote to her: You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: you are inferior and all the improvements in your condition which yousimply take for granted you owe to the effort of men who are better than you.

Ryan is an ideologue who insists on giving copies of Atlas Shrugged to interns in his congressional office. In 2005 he told a gathering of Rand fans, called the Atlas Society, that the reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.

Rolling back the evil state while balancing the budget on the backs of the feckless poor, in true Randian fashion, has always been Ryans primary goal. Even Newt Gingrich, who served as Republican House Speaker for five years in the 1990s, once decried Ryans proposals to privatise Medicare the popular federal health insurance programme that covers people over the age of 65 as right-wing social engineering.

These days, Ryan has a useful idiot in the White House to help him pull off the right-wing social engineering that he couldnt pull off on his own. Trump, who doesnt do detail or policy, is content, perhaps even keen, to outsource his domestic agenda to the policy wonk from Wisconsin.

The Speaker has made his deal with the devil: a reckless and racist demagogue, possibly in cahoots with Russia, can trample over the law, erode US democratic norms and embarrass the country, and the party, at home and abroad. And in return? Ryan gets top-rate tax cuts. To hell with theconstitution.

Trump, lest we forget, ran as an insurgent against the Republican establishment during the primaries, loudly breaking with hard-right GOP orthodoxy on issues such as infrastructure spending (Trump promised more), health-care reform (Trump promised coverage for all) and Medicaid (Trump promised no cuts). It was all a charade, a con. And Ryan knew it. The Speaker may have been slow to endorse Trump but when he did so, last June, he made it clear that on the issues that make up our agenda, we have more common ground thandisagreement.

A year later, Ryan has been vindicated: free trade deals aside, Trump is governing as a pretty conventional, hard-right conservative. Consider the first important budget proposal from the Trump administration, published on 23 May. For Ryan, its a Randian dream come true: $800bn slashed from Medicaid, which provides health care to low-income Americans, plus swingeing cuts to Snap (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programme, aka food stamps), Chip (the Childrens Health Insurance Programme) and SSDI (disability insurance).

In Trump, Ryan and his fellow anti-government hardliners in Congress have found the perfect frontman to enact their reverse-Robin Hood economic agenda: a self-declared, rhetorical champion of white, working-class voters whose actual Ryan-esque policies on tax cuts, health care, Wall Street regulation and the rest bolster only the billionaire class at their expense.

Dont be distracted by all thescandals: the president has been busy using his tiny hands to sign a wide array of bills, executive orders and judicial appointments that have warmed the cold hearts of the Republican hard right.

Impeachment, therefore, remains a liberal fantasy despite everything were discovering about Russia, Michael Flynn, James Comey and the rest. Does anyone seriously expect this Republican-dominated House of Representatives to bring articles of impeachment against Trump? With Paul Ryan in charge of it? Dont. Be. Silly.

Mehdi Hasan is a broadcaster and New Statesman contributing editor. He is based inWashington, DC

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The Randian Republican who could rein in Trump isn't a coward ... - New Statesman

There they sit, on the steaming hot concrete apron: jets, dozens of themsleek, shiny birds, screeching and spewing effluents, glistening and glimmering in the hot wavery air. Waiting.

Waiting to leave, to lift off, to soar. Once in the sky, these magnificent machines sweep along at 600 miles an houronce in the sky. Today, however, they wait, one behind the other, perched massively on silver struts atop puny Goodyear claws, looking like flightless flamingos, impressive but impotent, a mockery of themselves.

Aboard one place, a bureaucrat, like a heavy from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, corners a stewardess and demands that the pilot call the control tower, and get this crate in the air. Back flashes an answer from control: The dignitary will kindly wait, just like everyone else. Tough luck for the bureaucrat. A fitting reproach, though, really. For, if this bureaucrat is like the rest, it is his ideas, the bromides he dares to call convictions, that are responsible for the disaster he so hotly denounces. It is his legalized coercion, his forced cartels, his restrictions and his subsidies, which are the cause of the mess.

These birds, you see, these strong, innocent, friendly birds, are not free. They have been tied down and strung up, like metal Gullivers on the island of Lilliput, by two hoards of neurotic pygmies using millions of tiny strands of red tape: the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB). And that, simply that, is the essence of the crisis in the air. ED.

A private business whose sales volume had increased 1520% annually for seven years (and showed many signs of continuing to do so) would probably view its future with eager anticipation. In the government-controlled, privately "owned" cartel known as commercial aviation, however, the expected growth in air travel is viewed, in part, in horror. For as the volume of air traffic rises, a monumental crisis appears imminent, a crisis that threatens the complete paralysis of air transportation. What is the source of this seeming paradox? Flow can it be that the same industry that will be flying, fueling, and servicing the huge 747 next year, is unable to solve seemingly simple problems of supply and demand? The answer is not at all a difficult one to arrive at, provided one views the problem in its full scope, without recourse to the self-imposed blind spots that have plagued mass media "analysis" of the subject.

"Commercial aviation" consists of three distinct parts: the airports, the airways linking airports, and the airlines.

Although there are 10,000 airports in the U. S., many of them privately owned, all 525 of those large enough to handle scheduled airline service are owned by city governments (except Dulles and Washington National which belong to the federal government). These large airports are financed from taxes levied on local citizens, taxes they must pay whether or not they fly. Limited federal aid tax money is available for building runways at these airports, thus forcing many citizens quite remote from airports to pay for them. During the last ten years the pace of airport expansion has lagged far behind the growth in air traffic, because 1) local governments have little political incentive (or expertise) to accurately forecast passenger demand, 2) Congress has let the annual appropriation for airport aid gradually decrease, despite constantly increasing requests for such aid, and 3) local taxpayers are becoming increasingly hostile to higher taxes, especially for things which do not directly benefit them. Hourly capacity restrictions have already been imposed by the federal government at major east coast airports, because of the increasing congestion at terminals and on runways. When the 365-passenger 747 and the 300-passenger airbuses go into service in the next few years, only a handful of airports will have terminal facilities or access roads adequate for such large concentrations of people.

The airways consist of a number of paths in the sky, defined by ground- based radio navigation stations (navaids). The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) owns and operates the navaids and polices the airways. Anywhere above 3500 feet and in the vicinity of airports, all aircraft must fly under FAA control. Although modern electronics and computer technology make nearly- automatic air traffic control technologically feasible, the FAA still relies on the early 1950's method of using navaids only as references, with all control and decision-making in the hands of a (human) FAA air traffic controller. Because of limited funding by Congress, there aren't enough controllers, their salaries are low, and their training is poor. Combined with the high volume of air traffic, these conditions make today's controller extremely overworked, in many cases literally a nervous wreck. Another consequence and cause, perhaps, of the controller shortage is the fact that these men are "daily forced to compromise with safety procedures"1 in order to handle their workload. The controllers' slowdowns of 1968 and 1969, and their disastrous effects on flight schedules, illustrate how close to collapse the existing ATC system is.

The FAA's operations are financed out of general federal tax receipts (the tax on airline tickets goes into general revenue, while the tax on aviation gasoline goes into the highway trust fund!) Thus, as long as there aren't many crashes, Congress is content to appropriate meager sums for the FAA.2 The taxpayers, 60% of whom have never flown at all, justifiably feel little desire to be taxed even further to provide airways for the mere 15% who fly commercial airlines.

Finally, the airlines themselves present an interesting picture- Though nominally private companies, the airlines in fact are controlled by the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) in every essential aspect of their business. The routes between cities are divided up among the airlines as a huge cartel, originated and enforced by the CAB, thus making free entry into the market illegal. Likewise, it is nearly impossible for an airline to leave a particular market (by dropping a city from its schedule)the "public necessity and convenience" must be served, apparently regardless of losses. The prices charged customers for a particular route are fixed by CAB, in order to prevent "destructive" price competition. Price increases are permitted to the airlines only as a group, and price decreases, while allowed on an individual basis, must still be run through the mill of CAB. If companies in the steel industry tried to set up such an arrangement, they would be prosecuted by the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department. Indeed, the contradiction between the CAB's philosophy and the antitrust laws was illustrated last summer, when the CAB had to grant the airlines temporary immunity from antitrust action so that they could meet together to discuss coordinating their schedules, so as to relieve rush-hour airport congestion.

As if this were not enough, 13 local service airlines, which were formed after World War II with surplus aircraft and "temporary" subsidies, continue to receive on the order of $50 million per year in subsidy payments, out of general tax revenues. Thus, taxpayers are forced to pay huge direct subsidies, in addition to the countless indirect subsidies they provide in the form of "free airways, weather reports, landing aids, and mail contracts.

The net result of these government activities is that at least three distinct groups of people are being victimized. First, the vast majority of taxpayers who do not use the airlines are being unjustly taxed so that those who do fly can have air travel at less than its true cost. Second, the most competent, aggressive airlines owners (and potential airline owners) are being prevented from engaging in competition with the less competent companies, with the result that neither the more competent companies nor their stockholders can benefit as fully as they could and should. Third, the people who do fly are getting less efficient and less safe air service than, in the absence of government interference, they might; less efficient because of the lack of competition, and less safe because of the antiquated, under-funded, congested airport and airways system.

The question which should be obvious by now is; How, in "capitalist" America did such a horrendous tangle of vested interests and government control every come to pass? The standard "conservative" mythology holds that all of America's economic troubles began with FDR's New Deal. The sad fact of the matter is that government interference with and subsidy to American Aviation has a long "nonpartisan" history.

Throughout the history of American aviation the general rule has been that each expansion of government control was preceded by requests for such regulation from one or another group of people involved in aviation. At each step of the way, of course, the proponents did not foresee or advocate any further government involvementthey merely wished to blindly promote their own short-range special interest.

Federal involvement began in 1915 when when President Wilson selected a number number of aviation enthusiasts to form the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA) to "studythe problems of flight, with a view of their practical solution." The impetus for setting up NACA was World War I, but as with many government agencies, NACA emerged in 1919 as a permanent entity, and became a vigorous advocate of government control of aviation.

Former wartime aircraft producer Howard Coffin strongly supported NACA's position. During the war Coffin had been picked to head the government's Aircraft Production Board, which passed out over $1 billion in aircraft contracts to his own company and those of his fellow auto producers.3 Coffin and his friends ignored the advice of many aircraft designers and mass-produced the Liberty aircraft engine along automotive lines, which made it a poor aircraft powerplant. They also produced 10,500 DH-4 aircraft, only a few of which ever reached Europe. The remaining planes were subsequently sold as war surplus for 2% of their cost and the resulting postwar glut of cheap aircraft greatly depressed the market for new designs. The DH-4 with Liberty engines won the nickname of "flaming coffin" in the post-war years.

In 1918, at the urging of NACA, the Post Office inaugurated airmail service. Using the "coffins", post office service was risky at best. By 1925, 31 of the first 40 airmail pilots had been killed in crashes. Somehow, during the same 6-year periods, the safety record of many of the fledgling commercial operators was much better. In 1925 a government investigating board recommended that the Post Office let airmail contracts to private companies, rather than flying the mail themselves; Congress agreed, and passed the Kelly Airmail Act. One of the results was the formation of three "conglomerate" aviation companiesUnited Aircraft and Transport, North American (under GM control), and AVCOwhich proceed to win most of the longer airmail routes.

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