Who Was Ayn Rand?

Ayn Rand moved to the United States in 1926 and tried to establish herself in Hollywood. Her first novel, We the Living (1936), championed her rejection of collectivist values in favor of individual self interest, a belief that became more explicit with her subsequent novels The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957). Following the immense success of the latter, Rand promoted her philosophy of Objectivism through courses, lectures and literature.

Ayn Rand was born Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum on February 2, 1905, in St. Petersburg, Russia. The oldest daughter of Jewish parents (and eventually an avowed atheist), she spent her early years in comfort thanks to her dad's success as a pharmacist, proving a brilliant student.

In 1917, her father's shop was suddenly seized by Bolshevik soldiers, forcing the family to resume life in poverty in the Crimea. The situation profoundly impacted young Alissa, who developed strong feelings toward government intrusion into individual livelihood. She returned to her city of birth to attend the University of Petrograd, graduating in 1924, and then enrolled at the State Institute for Cinema Arts to study screenwriting.

Granted a visa to visit relatives in Chicago, Alissa left for the United States in early 1926, never to look back. She took on her soon-to-be-famous pen name and, after a few months in Chicago, moved to Hollywood to become a screenwriter.

Following a chance encounter with Hollywood titan Cecil B. DeMille, Rand became an extra on the set of his 1927 film The King of Kings, where she met actor Frank O'Connor. They married in 1929, and she became an American citizen in 1931.

Rand landed a job as a clerk at RKO Pictures, eventually rising to head of the wardrobe department, and continued developing her craft as a writer. In 1932, she sold her screenplay Red Pawn, a Soviet romantic thriller, to Universal Studios. She soon completed a courtroom drama called Penthouse Legend, which featured the gimmick of audience members serving as the jury. In late 1934, Rand and her husband moved to New York City for its production, now renamed Night of January 16th.

Around this time, Rand also completed her first novel, We the Living. Published in 1936 after several rejections, We the Living championed the moral authority of the individual through its heroine's battles with a Soviet totalitarian state. Rand followed with the novella Anthem (1938), about a future collectivist dystopia in which "I" has been stamped out of the language.

In 1937, Rand began researching a new novel by working for New York architect Ely Jacques Kahn. The result, after years of writing and more rejections, was The Fountainhead. Underscoring Rands individualistic underpinnings, the books hero, architect Howard Roark, refuses to adhere to conventions, going so far as to blowing up one of his own creations. While not an immediate success, The Fountainhead eventually achieved strong sales, and at the end of the decade became a feature film, with Gary Cooper in the role of Roark.

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Rand's ideas became even more explicit with the 1957 publication of Atlas Shrugged. A massive work of more than 1,000 pages, Atlas Shrugged portrays a future in which leading industrialists drop out of a collectivist society that exploits their talents, culminating with a notoriously lengthy speech by protagonist John Galt. The novel drew some harsh reviews, but became an immediate best seller.

Around 1950, Rand met with a college student named Nathan Blumenthal, who changed his name to Nathaniel Branden and became the author's designated heir. Along with his wife, Barbara, Braden formed a group that met at Rand's apartment to engage in intellectual discussions. The group, which included future Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, called itself the Collective, or the Class of '43 (the publication year of The Fountainhead).

Rand soon honed her philosophy of what she termed "Objectivism": a belief in a concrete reality, from which individuals can discern existing truths, and the ultimate moral value of the pursuit of self interest. The development of this system essentially ended her career as a novelist: In 1958, the Nathaniel Branden Institute formed to spread her message through lectures, courses and literature, and in 1962, the author and her top disciple launched The Objectivist Newsletter. Her books during this period, including For the New Intellectual (1961) and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966), were primarily comprised of previously published essays and other works.

Following a public split with Braden, the author published The Romantic Manifesto (1969), a series of essays on the cultural importance of art, and repackaged her newsletter as The Ayn Rand Letter. She continued traveling to give lectures, though she was slowed by an operation for lung cancer. In 1979, she published a collection of articles in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, which included an essay from protg Leonard Peikoff.

Rand was working on a television adaptation of Atlas Shrugged when she died of heart failure at her home in New York City on March 6, 1982.

Although she weathered criticism for her perceived literary shortcomings and philosophical arguments, Rand undeniably left her mark on the Western culture she embraced. In 1985, Peikoff founded the Ayn Rand Institute to continue her teachings. The following year, Braden's ex-wife, Barbara, published a tell-all memoir, The Passion of Ayn Rand, which later was made into a movie starring Helen Mirren.

Interest in Rand's works resurfaced alongside the rise of the Tea Party movement during President Barack Obama's administration, with leading political proponents like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz proclaiming their admiration for the author. In 2010, the Ayn Rand Institute announced that more than 500,000 copies of Atlas Shrugged had been sold the previous year.

In 2017,Tony-winning director Ivo van Hove reintroduced The Fountainhead to the American public with a production at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Having originated at Toneelgroep Amsterdam in the Netherlands, van Hove's version featured his performers speaking in Dutch, with their words projected onto a screen in English.

Go here to see the original:

Ayn Rand - Books, Quotes & Philosophy - Biography

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Objectivism is important to sales professionals because it's the kind of philosophy that, if you believe in it, you're going to screw up your ability to sell effectively. As a profession, Sales has moved beyond the attempt to manipulate people selfishly for one's own ends, which is how Objectivism plays itself out in the real world.

Most successful sales professionals feel that they are in service to something greater than themselves. Unfortunately, that's not a belief that often shared by their top management, as pointed out in the BNET blog post "Why Do CEOs (Still) Love Ayn Rand." That post summarized Objectivism as:

As a bonus, we won't be forced any longer to listen to newly minted Rand fanboys drone on and on and on and on about how much more enlightened they are than the rest of us hoi-polloi. Puleeze! (eye roll)

NOTE: If you want an example of the kind of behavior you can expect from Rand-influenced CEOs (as well as other assorted follies) check out these posts:

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Top 10 Reasons Ayn Rand was Dead Wrong - CBS News

Welcome back to Reading the Weird, in which we get girl cooties all over weird fiction, cosmic horror, and Lovecraftianafrom its historical roots through its most recent branches.

This week, we cover Molly Tanzers Grave-Worms, first published in the Joseph Pulvers 2015 Cassildas Song anthology. Spoilers ahead!

To desire is to live, and to live is to desire.

Docia Calderan ambitious mogul with a penchant for making suits look wholly femininemeets Roy Irving at a mayoral fund-raiser where only they oppose a new courthouse statue. What do lions drinking with jackals have to do with Justice? They discuss joint business ventures over dinner at Delmonicos while the pheromones fly. Yet the restaurants emptiness disturbs her. Lately shes noticed a strange lethargy in New York, with few people braving the streets. The pall extends to her enjoyment of Delmonicos normally excellent fare. Does Roy sense the change?

Have you found the Yellow Sign? Roy responds with a shrug. Its a catchphrase on everyones lips. Nobody knows why people say it. To Docia, it feels like shutting the curtains, locking the doorgoing to sleep.

Outside, clouds obscure stars and moon. It strikes Docia that the city lights are stars, the skyscrapers galaxies. But human will made New York, and nothing can break the citys spirit. A little tipsy, she stumbles. Roy offers to drive her home. Whose home? is her careless reply. He laughs like a living god, and Docia falls into his arms without any fear at all.

So their affair and business partnership begins. Captains of industry, they both want more, always more. But shes not thrilled when he asks her to a cocktail party hosted by theater critic Fulvius Elbreth. Elbreth approved the justice statue, and has crazy ideas about how kings would be better for America than corporate-backed politicians. But Roy insists that the cost of doing business is association with disagreeable powerbrokers.

Party-bound, Docia feels the citys darker than usual. Roy notices nothing amiss. Elbreths apartments full of self-proclaimed intellectuals. The critic is in on every conversation, doling out pithy bons mots. Docia overhears him crowning abstraction as the only acceptable form of modern artistic expression. Representational art is pure arrogance, Elbreth explains, because nothing is knowable enough to represent. Docia argues. Elbreth glibly twists her words, and she escapes to the balcony. Another womans there, smoking. Docia politely nods, then stares at the oddly dim city and cloud-masked sky. When was the last time she saw stars?

Dont let them bother you, the woman says in a clipped, aristocratic accent. Her tailored suit and expression of intense determination impress Docia. Docia, the woman says, is a creator. Critics are destroyersno, less, for they lack will. Theyre grave-worms, feasting on whats already dead.

Though unnerved by the womans familiarity, Docia accepts the most delicious cigarette shes ever smoked. She asks the woman if she senses the gathering darkness. It is darker, the woman says, but as for why: Have you found the Yellow Sign?

The woman vanishes as Elbreth comes out to apologize. Though they differ, Docias opinions on art intrigue him, and hed like to invite her to attend a play, one with a blinkered history thats banned in Europe. Docia agrees to the not-dateElbreth knows shes seeing that meathead Irving.

Docia examines the perfect cigarette butt for a brandmark, and finds a strange golden insignia. She pockets the butt to show to a tobacconist. When Roy hears about Docias not-date, he angrily dumps her. She shrugs off the rejection, more interested in the insignia. Have you found the Yellow Sign?

The tobacconist cant identify the stub mark. Moreover, he doesnt want to find out what it means, and she should take it away! Docias not-date with Elbreth starts out pleasantly. The first act of the play isnt the diatribe Docia expected, but poetry and action more confounding than alarming. Elbreth, however, emerges for intermission pale and sweaty. Somethings wrong, he says. He has to go; Docias willingness to stay makes him flee without hat or coat.

She sits through the remaining acts riveted, entranced. The plays not one of Elbreths abstractions, but more real than anything shes experienced before. She seems to exit the theater alone. The city is silent and dark, but the clouds have dispersed, and the night sky greets her with black stars brighter than any artificial, earthly light and uncounted moons. The constellations are foreign, but Docia laughs. Shes lost her whole life, and finally found her way.

The balcony woman appears, leaning on a streetlight, her suit looking like priestly vestments. Did Docia like the play, she asks, the flash of her yellow eyes blinding. Docia thinks so.

Youre not someone who appreciates uncertainties, the woman says. Lets have a cigarette and talk about it. Docia accepts. Content with silence, she exhales smoke through which she sees that the strange gold insignia is even brighter than the ember.

Whats Cyclopean: Docias fond of straightforward similes: invitations like poisonous snakes, robes crumpled like flowers after a rainstorm, witticisms as light and frothy as egg white on a Ramos Gin Fizz. Her first exposure to the sign moves her to less marked metaphors: eyes as starless pools, starless skies as clotted. The play itself brings her to direct, effusive description: swirling constellations and radiance undreamed. And then to silence.

The Degenerate Dutch: Roy plays at sexism with Docia, or maybe hes not playing. Its all part of being businessmenforgive me, business-people.

Weirdbuilding: We all know the title on that theatrical handbill. And the sign on that cigarette.

Libronomicon: Critic Elbreth, despite his fondness for abstract art, also enjoys political and theatrical classics: he uses a review of Hamlet to advocate for American monarchy. There are probably easier contexts in which to do that, but you do you.

The King in Yellow, meanwhile, reminds Docia of Antigone.

Madness Takes Its Toll: Hearing about the yellow sign, at first, makes Docia feel like lying down shutting the curtains going to sleep. And it does, indeed, seem to spread a pall of apathy and depression over New York.

Ruthannas Commentary

Have you seen the yellow sign? And if youve seen it, do you have any clue what it means?

In Chamberss original, the play and the sign bring both madness and their own reality, the ambiguity never resolved. Laws comes down on the own reality side, with the plays readers immanentizing the future of Repairer of Reputation into (and then out of) existence. Walterss Black Stars on Canvas makes Carcosa a source of poetic madness and inspiration, while Geist does nothing so linear in translating it to gonzo rock opera. Its a force of destruction and change, creativity and illusionand where the emphasis falls among those four depends on the story.

My previous experience with Tanzer was the delightfully decadent Creatures of Will and Temper, so I went into this story expecting lush sensory detail and Walters-ish artistic sacrifices. I got the lush detail, for sure, as Docia appreciates both her appetites and the things that feed them. But shes no artist: she sees desire as fuel for the ultimate appetite of capitalism. Ironically, given her artistic preferences, those appetites remain abstract. She and Roy are captains of industry, better than kings, and thats all we learn of their business efforts. They share a love of good food and a preference for representational art. And at the storys outset, neither of them has seen the yellow sign.

Theyre growing unusual in that ignorance, though. Our first hint about the role of all things yellow is a disturbing change to the City That Never Sleeps. New York grown quieter, duller, starless even by comparison with its usual light pollution, is a worrisome imagethe moreso now, having seen how much and how little a pandemic lockdown does to the citys spirit.

Carcosa takes at least two forms here. First, theres the gold-sigiled cigarette that leaves all other cigarettes tasting ashen. This seems fully in keeping with the effect on the city: a force for sapping vitality. But maybe its more complicated than that. Because the signs second form is the play itself. And at least for Docia, the play pulls her into another reality entirely, one with all the passion and pleasure thats fading from her original world.

So is the sign replacing reality with delusion? Is it vampirizing our worlds energy and light to keep Carcosa alive, or to bring it into being? Is there only one world, experienced differently by those who have and havent encountered the transformative power of yellow?

Fulvius Elbreth recognizes the play as dangerousenough to flee in the teeth of a review deadline. But we already know hes dubious about realism, preferring abstraction to the lies of meaning. He speaks for the gospel of cosmic horror: that rationality is irrational and human-scale understanding an illusion. Maybe this inocculates him against the plays parasitic certaintyor maybe it keeps him from appreciating truth when he encounters it.

What about the unnamed harbinger of Carcosa? (Ill call her Cassilda.) Maybe shes priming people for the play with her perfect cigarettes. Or maybe shes spreading her worlds reality through a thousand different yellow-signed experiences, a thousand flavors of fairy food and drink and drug to leave users dissatisfied with everything but the flash of her yellow eyes.

And shes the one who drops the storys title. She accuses critics, Elbreth in particular, of being grave-worms who feast on that which is already dead. When you think about it, thats an awfully judgmental way to describe someone who evaluates art. Elbreth is no Pierce, living only to describe fault in the most vicious way possible. Indeed, Docias original issue is with the art he likes.

It seems to me that Cassildas accusation carries a sinister implication: that the art of this world is already dead. That Elbreth is stuck with beautiful things that are only growing dimmerthings that Cassilda herself is working to destroy.

Which means that Carcosa, too, is feasting on the dead. And that for all their pleasure and intensity, the cigarettes and the infamous play are the real grave-worms.

Annes Commentary

Any worthwhile afterlife must host a coffeehouse frequented by artists of every era and ilk. When the place gets overcrowded, the oddest couples may share tables. There, way in the back, between the rack of coffee-stained newspapers and the shelf of donated books, Im spotting Robert W. Chambers with

Ayn Rand?

Yes, Ayn Rand. Theres no mistaking that sensible, side-parted bob and those eyes expressive of intense determination, a single-mindedness of purpose. The ashtray in front of her is full of stubs, the brandmark of which I cant make out from the land of the living. And yes, the celestial coffeehouse allows smoking; all the patrons being dead, the management figures what harm can it do.

The ethereal vibrations of Chambers and Rands interaction must have reached Molly Tanzer, whose Grave-Worms resembles a collision between The King in Yellow and Atlas Shrugged. That is, what would have happened if Dagney Taggart found hearts home not in Galts Gulch but in Lost Carcosa?

I picked up Randian vibes in Tanzers first paragraph, which in describing Docia Calder echoes Rands descriptions of both Dagney and The Fountainheads Dominique Francon. Roy Irving comes along to represent business tycoon Hank Reardon; later we get Fountainheads architectural critic Ellsworth Toohey in theater critic Fulvius Elbreth. Fulvous refers to a range of colors from yellow-brown to tawny to dull orange a Fulvius cannot rival the real-gold yellow of Balcony-Womans cigarette insignia, any more than Ellsworth Toohey can rival Rands hypermasculine heroes.

Along with hints from fashion, hairstyles, and the pervasive cigarette puffing, Docia and Roys date at Delmonicos sets the period of the story in the mid-twentieth century, paralleling the felt period of Atlas Shrugged; the midcentury incarnation of Delmonicos was where the elite met to chow down on the signature steaks, Lobster Newberg and Baked Alaska. Thematically more important is the atmospheric similarity of Tanzer and Rands New Yorks, languishing in the grip of failing vitality and a general emotional/spiritual malaise. People express their foreboding with catchphrases of unknown origin, though their true meanings will be crucial to the story. Atlas opens with Who is John Galt? Roy carelessly throws out the question Docia detests: Have you found the Yellow Sign?

Maybe the Yellow Sign makes Docia think of the yellow peril, that Western fear that the barbarian hordes of Asia were poised to destroy the white mans superior culture. Not that all whites are dependable. In Atlas and Grave-Worms a major threat to our way of living is the spread of Socialism even in Europe. Docia assumes that Elbreths play is banned there for anti-Socialist sentiments that would offend the delicate sensibilities of those snooty soap-dodgers.

At the heart of Dagny Taggarts and Docias disgust with modern philosophy is its rejection of reason and its elevation of the subjective over the objective. To accept with Fulvius Elbreth that only in abstraction can we truly show reality is a moral as well as an intellectual sin. Maybe Elbreth can slither by (wormlike) by suggesting he applies his principles to Art, not reality. Balcony Woman doesnt buy it. To her, Docia is Rands epitome of humankind, the Creator, the independent thinker and doer for whom justice is fair exchange for value, with money as the most objective indicator of approval anyone can give another human. Whereas Elbreth the critic is a lower-case destroyer, a grave-worm able to feast only on whats dead.

Which implies that to feast on a living thing, Elbreth and kin must first kill it.

Tanzers most telling reference to Atlas Shrugged lies in how Docia receives the emblem of upper-case Reality in the form of a cigarette brandmark. Searching for John Galt, Dagny Taggart happens upon philosopher Hugh Akston, the last champion of Reason, whos left academia to run an obscure mountain diner. He gives Dagny the best cigarette shes ever tasted; later shell notice that the stub is branded with a golden dollar sign. Sadly, her tobacconist friend is unable to discover the cigarettes origin; his sincere opinion is that it comes from nowhere on this Earth! The golden dollar sign turns out to be the emblem of Galts Gulch and its inhabitants, the stalwarts of objectivism.

Docias mark turns out to be the Yellow Sign, emblem of Carcosa and the King in Yellow. The King in Grave-Worms takes the curious form of Balcony Woman who, when revealed under black stars and radiant moons, may be Docia idealized, a woman who wears her suit so well it resembles priests vestments or royal robes of state.

Whats it all mean, this fusion of Chambers and Rand into Tanzer? Whos John Galt, and how about that Yellow Signfound it yet? I guess Galt represents the Real on Earth, whereas the Sign leads beyond Earth into an Ultimate Reality in which Docia can finally feel really right and really content and smoke only the really best without health repercussions, forever.

So one of Cassildas happier endings?

Is it?

[ETA: This is what I get for avoiding Atlas Shrugged! But put our analyses together, and I think you get a really interesting critique of Randian objectivism. Or just capitalism. RE]

Next week, we continue N. K. Jemisins The City We Became with the 2nd Interruption and Chapter 4. Maybe Aislyn will meet someone more trustworthy? But probably not trust them

Ruthanna Emryss A Half-Built Garden comes out July 26th. She is also the author of the Innsmouth Legacy series, including Winter Tide and Deep Roots. You can find some of her fiction, weird and otherwise, on Tor.com, most recently The Word of Flesh and Soul. Ruthanna is online on Twitter and Patreon, and offline in a mysterious manor house with her large, chaotic, multi-species household outside Washington DC.

Anne M. Pillsworths short story The Madonna of the Abattoir appears on Tor.com. Her young adult Mythos novel, Summoned, is available from Tor Teen along with sequel Fathomless. She lives in Edgewood, a Victorian trolley car suburb of Providence, Rhode Island, uncomfortably near Joseph Curwens underground laboratory.

The rest is here:

Lions Drinking With Jackals: Molly Tanzer's Grave-Worms - tor.com

I rose on Saturday morning with the intent to analyze how this insane Big Ten expansion into Los Angeles could be rationalized and developed into a viable model.

But, the more I consider it, the more I want to see the entire Big Ten acquisition enterprise led by FOX Sports collapse and explode in a massive fireball. And so, I have built a scenario for that vision, one I can root for.

First, an updated review of the landscape as of Saturday night. Several reporters I trust have posted recent key developments:

Dennis Dodd of CBS Sports reported that Oregon and Washington have been informed that the Big Ten is sitting tight for now and is waiting on Notre Dame to decide whether it also will join the B1G.

Scott Dochterman of The Athletic inferred quite logically that FOX is not at all interested in a new B1G West division that would impede USC and UCLA from playing Big Ten East powers Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State more than once every four years. The TV folks want the big-ratings splash games as often as possible.

Influential Portland radio host John Canzano, formerly of OregonLive, wrote an open plea to 84-year-old Nike founder and generous Oregon Ducks benefactor Phil Knight to save whats left of the Pac-12 by encouraging a proactive raid of the Big 12, surmising quite logically that its one conference or the other that will survive. I say, maybe neither, but thats another story.

Sports Illustrateds Pat Forde suggested that, if were really in uncharted fittest-survival mode, whats to stop these budding super-conferences from jettisoning unwanted baggage, schools that have never pulled their weight financially like Purdue and Minnesota and Vanderbilt and Mississippi State?

Its chaos out there, every league and school for itself. There are no rules anymore. Its an Ayn Rand biosphere. And thanks to the body snatching of the SEC and B1G by Disney and FOX and hatching of its larvae inside college football, only one asset matters. Its not tradition or collegiality or rivalries or bands or any of the other facets weve always loved about college sports.

Its about money. Only money.

Here are the architects of this takeover. Take a good look at them. They are most responsible for whats happened to your campus games. Jimmy Pitaro, president of ESPN. Mark Silverman, president of FOX Sports. The former greased the skids for Texas and Oklahoma joining the Southeastern Conference and leaving the Big 12 in ruin. The latter headed up Southern California and UCLA bolting for the Big Ten and leaving the Pac-12 adrift and very likely irrelevant.

ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro (left) and FOX Sports president Mark Silverman (right).ESPN/FOX Sports

This super-league concept is what the money men of European soccer tried to do to the Premier League. It didnt happen because the fans there who love the game even many who wear powerful colors of Chelsea blue and Manchester red stuck up for the smaller poorer clubs of the 20 and shouted down the concept.

But something of that sentiment is missing in the United States. Because we are such a divided nation in so many ways, nobody seems to care about the welfare of anyone else. Get yours, make certain your fence line is secure and screw your neighbor! These are now the bromides of college sports.

I dont sense that many fans of the B1G or SEC care in the slightest that the landscape beyond their ever-growing footprints is being scoured. That the plucky underdogs of Iowa State and Oregon State and, yes, now Pittsburgh, are vulnerable to being washed away by a tidal wave of unchecked greed.

My hope is this: That the incompetent Peter Principle leadership of Kevin Warren is exposed again. That this FOX money grab will blow up in the Big Tens face when all the athletes at USC and UCLA begin to realize what theyve been lassoed into: 12-hour-minimum weekly excursions in planes to and from slate-colored, stratus-clouded upper Midwestern and Eastern outposts. I am hoping for an out-and-out rebellion, that recruiting craters at the Los Angeles schools because word of mouth spreads you dont wanna do this, man. Its brutal.

These are two regional cultures that do not belong together. They are both beautiful in their own rights the diligent windswept plainsmen of the Cornbelt and the flamboyant sun-kissed sons of SoCal. They have zero in common. And what the profiteers of telecasting dont get is, a league must have a culture in common. Its not merely a division of professionals. Its a bunch of college kids still representing a specific slice of the country.

I have a feeling this is not going to work. The network execs have no such premonition because they are soulless opportunists who only understand fiscal metrics. They are merely attempting to group the most valuable assets in the belief that they can maximize profit.

Well then, call me a spread bettor looking for a loss. I think this USC/UCLA acquisition is headed for disaster.

If Warren had the audacity of his predecessor Jim Delany, he wouldve at least gone all in on this western expansion. He wouldve seen the SECs Texas/Oklahoma play with USC/UCLA and raised it with Oregon/Washington/Utah to form an entirely new West division composed fully of Pac-12 members, then made a big swaggering offer to Notre Dame to make 20. If ND refuses, North Carolina is the contingency.

If youre going to do this super-conference move, you do it big and bold and shamelessly. You give the Trojans and Bruins brothers in arms to make them feel included in their new digs. Of course, the FOX boys have already told Warren and the B1G presidents that the Ducks and Huskies and Utes dont provide quite enough bang for the TV buck pro rata, its called in the trade to be worth an equal slice of a diminished pie.

And I dont think Warren has the sort of stones or vision to go against their advice. Hes going to slow play his hand like the donkey he is. And the Big Ten is going to end up with a couple of incongruous ill-fitting members with no Pacific brethren to join them. Its going to suck for them. Actually, its going to suck for everybody.

And so, Im hoping for exactly that a giant failure so dysfunctional and chaotic that it totally implodes. That, by the end of the decade, USC and UCLA are returned in some sort of Western conference along the coast with their neighbors. And the Big Ten recedes back to the cornfields where it belongs.

Thats the thing, though, in this lawless world without borders. Nobody knows who they are anymore. They only care what theyre worth.

More PennLive sports coverage:

Reasons for and residue of USC/UCLA bolt to Big Ten have me conflicted at best, depressed at worst.

Had he been given a chance, Marlin Briscoe could have been a great pro QB, but he was born too soon.

Off Topic: How a PSU academic advisor inspired Wally Richardson 30 years ago to maximize his words.

Read the original here:

Heres hoping this USC/UCLA-Big Ten merger careens off the track, crashes and burns | Jones - PennLive

For billionaire Ken Griffin, it was well worth spending $54 million to ensure he and other rich Illinoisans wouldn't have to pay more tax.

By the time Illinois voters streamed into voting booths on Election Day in 2020, Griffin, then Illinois' wealthiest resident, had made sure they'd heard plenty about why they should not vote to raise taxes on him and the state's other rich people. His tens of millions paid for an unrelenting stream of ads and flyers against an initiative on that year's ballot, which would have allowed Illinois lawmakers to join 32 other states in setting higher tax rates for the wealthy than for everyone else.

In the end, Griffin spent about $18 for every one of the 3.1 million votes against the initiative. After initial optimism about its prospects, the measure came up hundreds of thousands of votes short and went down to defeat.

Rarely does the public get a clear view of the payoff for wealthy Americans who put their money down to achieve a political outcome. But in this case, ProPublica's trove of IRS data can provide crucial context for the ballot fight. For Griffin and many of his fellow ultrawealthy Illinoisans, spending even such a vast amount was well worth it when compared with what a tax hike might have cost them.

According to the data, Griffin averaged an annual income of $1.7 billion from 2013 to 2018. That was the fourth-highest in the country, behind only the likes of Bill Gates.

Using that average income as a guideline, the new state tax increase, which aimed to raise the rate from 5% to 8% on the highest incomes, would have cost Griffin around $51 million every year in extra tax. In especially good years in 2018, Griffin reported income of almost $2.9 billion he might have been forced to pay more than $80 million more.

A Citadel spokesperson responding on Griffin's behalf pointed out that, according to ProPublica's previously published data, Griffin paid the second-highest amount of taxes of any American from 2013 to 2018. "Over the past decade," he said in a statement, "it is almost a certainty that Ken has been the largest individual taxpayer in the State of Illinois a state notorious for profligate spending and rampant corruption." Griffin has said he's not against raising taxes; he opposed the measure, he added in his statement, because "Illinois needs to put its fiscal house in order before burdening hard-working families with yet more taxes."

The state's current flat tax rate of 5% is far below the top rates in other large states run by Democrats like California and New York and comparable to those in some Republican-led states like Utah. Advocates for raising the rates on the wealthy in Illinois say the state needs additional revenue, pointing to its regular budget deficits and deep pension debts.

Not all Griffin's political bets pay off. A candidate for Illinois governor he supported with tens of millions of dollars went down to defeat in June's Republican primary. Meanwhile, even though the income tax initiative was defeated, Griffin announced last month that he was moving Citadel's headquarters to Miami and relocating there himself.

Though no other donor to the anti-tax fight came close to matching the tens of millions that Griffin gave, others made contributions that were more than what most Illinois households earn in a year. ProPublica analyzed the tax data of nine other ultrawealthy supporters of Griffin's anti-tax campaign. According to our estimate, this group of heirs and business owners, which includes some of the wealthiest people in Illinois, can expect to see a healthy return on their contributions and save millions in taxes over the coming years.

The math behind our estimate is simple: Wealthy Illinoisans will save about 3% of their income, because that was the size of the proposed tax increase on the wealthy. That's essentially how Illinois' state income taxes work for Illinois residents. With some adjustments, a state tax rate is applied to the income listed on their federal returns. ProPublica contacted all 10 of the anti-tax donors mentioned in this article and the accompanying chart. None challenged the methodology used to estimate their tax savings.

Richard Uihlein, who along with Griffin has emerged as a conservative megadonor on the national stage, pitched in $100,000 to the anti-tax campaign for him a modest amount given his average annual income of $492 million in recent years. Through his family foundation, Uihlein has also given millions of dollars to the Illinois Policy Institute, a small-government group that fought the graduated tax plan. Uihlein's average income would lead to about $15 million of annual tax savings from the defeat of the ballot initiative.

Sam Zell, the real estate mogul known in Chicago for putting together a leveraged buyout of the Tribune Company that preceded its bankruptcy, gave $1.1 million. Based on his recent income, he would save $1.6 million in taxes each year. A spokesperson for Zell declined to comment.

Patrick Ryan made his billions in insurance, and Northwestern University's football stadium and basketball arena bear his family's name, thanks to the hundreds of millions he's given the school. He gave $1 million. His recent income suggests $2.1 million in annual tax savings.

Richard Colburn, whose billionaire family owns the electrical parts maker CED, gave $500,000 to the anti-tax campaign, which would help save him $5.5 million each year in taxes, according to our estimates. In an email message to ProPublica, Colburn said his reasons for opposing the graduated tax were simple: It would have "eaten substantially" into his investment earnings, some of which he passes on to a nonprofit foundation he manages. Like Griffin, he contended the state would not have used the money well.

"Though I enjoy living in the Chicago area, I could save immensely by moving to a lower-tax state, and therefore I 'invested' to limit the temptation on me to relocate," Colburn wrote. "Another element of my 'investment' stems from my desire to limit the mis-spending by the State of Illinois that occurs every time Springfield has extra money." (His full statement is here.)

Donald Wilson, founder of the trading firm DRW, gave $250,000 to the anti-tax campaign. That donation in particular looks modest when weighed against his potential tax savings: Based on Wilson's average annual income of $114 million, the proposed tax increase would have cost him $3.5 million more every year.

Some of the contributions to the anti-tax campaign came from trusts, special legal entities often used by the wealthy to hide or protect assets, as well as to avoid the estate tax. Richard Stephenson, founder of a chain of for-profit hospitals called Cancer Treatment Centers of America, contributed $300,000 through his Celebrate Life Trust. Stephenson is a longtime Republican donor and such an enthusiast of Ayn Rand's message of uncompromising self-interest that he was an executive producer on two movies based on the novel "Atlas Shrugged."

Uihlein, Ryan, Wilson and Stephenson also did not respond to requests for comment.

One $25,000 contribution came from the Philip M. Friedmann Family Charitable Trust. Friedmann made his fortune by selling the greeting card company he co-founded to a private equity firm.

Friedmann's trust, unlike Stephenson's, is a personal foundation. That means Friedmann likely received a tax deduction for donating to his own organization, which then used some of the funds to fight an increase in his taxes.

The contribution to the anti-tax campaign by Friedmann's foundation appears to have violated federal tax law, three nonprofit tax law experts told ProPublica. Personal foundations are prohibited from spending to try to influence legislation, a category that includes contributions to a ballot initiative committee, said Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer, a law professor at Notre Dame. Organizations that break that law are required to pay a penalty of up to 25% of the expenditure in addition to attempting to retrieve the money.

Although this prohibition is spelled out on the IRS' online guide for private foundations, "smaller family foundations don't always know the applicable rules," said Ellen Aprill, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University.

Friedmann did not respond to requests for comment.

Illinois didn't have an income tax of any kind until 1969, when a deal between GOP Gov. Richard Ogilvie and Democratic Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley resulted in a flat statewide tax of 2.5% on individuals and 4% on corporations. Some Democrats said the tax disproportionately punished low-income families, and pushed for higher rates on the wealthy. But Republicans and other critics argued for expiration dates or rate limits, warning that otherwise lawmakers would simply keep hiking and expanding income taxes. The following year, a compromise was encoded in the state's updated constitution. It clarified that the General Assembly had the power to impose an income tax but only "at a non-graduated rate."

As the state's fiscal problems grew in the following decades, governors and legislators repeatedly raised the flat tax rate until it was up to 5% on individuals. In 2014, multimillionaire private equity investor Bruce Rauner, a Republican backed by Griffin, was elected governor after promising to slash taxes, and the rate was lowered to 3.75%. But as Rauner fell into a bitter standoff with the Democratic-controlled General Assembly, the state went without a budget for more than two years, leaving it in an even deeper financial hole.

The General Assembly, including some Republicans, voted in 2017 to raise the income tax again, to 4.95% on individuals.

Democrat JB Pritzker, a billionaire investor whose family founded the Hyatt hotel chain, launched his campaign for governor by casting himself as a wealthy man who would fight for the middle class and for a graduated tax that was less burdensome for low-income families than the flat-rate system. Rauner vowed to stop him. Their 2018 campaigns spent more than $250 million combined, including $22.5 million that Griffin gave to Rauner, before Pritzker won that November.

With the support of a committed and rich governor, a graduated income tax suddenly seemed possible in Illinois.

"That created a bunch of new momentum," said Ralph Martire, executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, a think tank that argued in favor of a graduated income tax. "That was enough political support to really get the grassroots groups working on it."

Outside of a special convention, both the Illinois House and Senate must sign off on a state constitutional amendment by three-fifths majorities. Voters then need to approve it, either by a clear majority of all voters casting ballots in a general election or a three-fifths majority of those voting on the measure itself.

In 2019 the Senate and then the House each met that threshold, passing a measure that would eliminate the graduated income tax ban if voters approved an amendment. Companion legislation laid out what the new tax schedule would be: Rates would either drop or remain at 4.95% for people reporting income up to $250,000; they would climb from there, to a rate of 7.99% on individuals earning above $750,000 and couples above $1 million. The top rate was within the range of those in other Midwest states with graduated systems higher than Missouri's but lower than Iowa's.

Supporters and opponents then had more than a year to make their cases.

Illinois election laws set some limits on campaign donations and spending. But the rules are riddled with loopholes, and they impose no limits on political committees formed to advocate for or against ballot initiatives like the income tax proposal.

Opponents of the graduated income tax formed at least five different campaign committees that raised nearly $63 million altogether. The best funded, by far, was the Coalition to Stop the Proposed Tax Hike Amendment, which collected almost $60 million, including the $54 million from Griffin. The coalition received most of its remaining money from other billionaires and millionaires, according to state campaign donation records.

On the other side, Pritzker created the Vote Yes for Fairness committee, plowing $58 million of his own fortune to support the "fair tax" campaign. Apart from Pritzker's donations, the committee received just one $250 contribution, records show.

Griffin also launched other offensives. In October 2020, the Chicago Tribune reported that Griffin had lambasted Pritzker as "a shameless master of personal tax avoidance" in an email to Citadel's Chicago staff.

The bulk of Pritzker's wealth ($3.6 billion, according to Forbes) is in trusts, some domestic and some located offshore. Pritzker has said some were set up by his grandfather. As ProPublica reported last year, it was common for 20th century patriarchs to set up trusts that passed fortunes down through the generations free of estate taxes.

Pritzker has released his personal tax returns, but has not provided detailed information about the trusts. For 2020, Pritzker's office released returns showing $5.1 million in personal income for the governor and his wife, MK. The domestic trusts benefiting the governor also paid $16.3 million in Illinois taxes and $69.6 million in federal taxes in 2020, according to Pritzker spokesperson Natalie Edelstein.

ProPublica's IRS data does not shed light on those trusts. When ProPublica requested further detail, Edelstein said the governor is not releasing documents concerning the trusts because he "is not the only beneficiary, so he does not have authority to release all of the information." She said that the governor had not personally accepted any disbursements from the offshore trusts, instead giving them to charity. She did not address whether the trusts had been set up to avoid estate taxes, only saying they were "established generations ago."

At the height of the graduated income tax campaign, advertisements for and against the initiative seemed to be everywhere in Illinois in mailboxes, online, all over the airwaves.

"You couldn't even watch TV it was just one ad after another," recalled David Merriman, a public administration professor at the University of Illinois Chicago.

Merriman's research had found that Illinois received less revenue from income taxes and placed a higher tax burden on low-income taxpayers than neighboring states with graduated systems, including states led by Republicans. But, perhaps predictably, the ads largely avoided policy discussions in favor of political appeals.

"At the worst possible time, Springfield politicians are pushing a constitutional amendment that would give them new powers to make it easier to raise taxes on all Illinois taxpayers," a narrator in one anti-tax ad declared. "And if there's one thing we know about Springfield politicians, it's that you can't trust them."

The fair-tax campaign accused the rich of trying to fool middle-class families and claimed, based on the state Senate bill that had already passed, that as many as 97% of taxpayers would pay the same or less under the governor's plan.

But voters weren't convinced. Federal investigations of several Chicago and state politicians were making headlines, and Merriman said the graduated tax advocates failed to persuade voters that they would benefit from the amendment. The initiative failed by a vote of 53% to 47%.

"It showed just how distrustful everyone is of the government," he said.

The big money battle has continued in the Illinois governor's race this year. This January, Pritzker deposited $90 million into his own reelection fund the largest single political contribution in Illinois in decades and probably ever. Under state election law, candidates can lift donation limits in a race by funding their own campaigns.

Several of the anti-tax funders contributed large sums to Republicans aiming to unseat Pritzker this fall. Once again, Griffin led the way, spending $50 million, but his handpicked candidate lost the GOP primary last week to Darren Bailey, a right-wing state senator propelled by more than $17 million Uihlein gave to his campaign and an aligned super PAC. Pritzker and the Democratic Governors Association also went head-to-head with Griffin, paying for ads attacking his candidate, Richard Irvin.

Bailey received an endorsement from Donald Trump the weekend before the election and finished with about 58% of the vote. Irvin faded to third place with 15%. In his election night victory speech, Bailey ripped Pritzker as an "out-of-touch, elitist billionaire."

"Do you feel overtaxed?" Bailey called out to his supporters. Their response: "Yeah!"

By then, Griffin had made a big announcement that meant his state tax bill would plummet.

In a letter to Citadel employees, Griffin announced that he was moving the company's headquarters to Miami and that he himself had already moved his family to the area.

Florida does not have a personal income tax. Experts told ProPublica Griffin will still pay some personal income tax in New York and Illinois since Citadel has offices there. But his bill is sure to shrink dramatically, likely saving him tens of millions a year.

In response to ProPublica's questions, Citadel did not address whether taxes motivated his move. Instead, in its statement the spokesperson cited crime concerns as the prime motivator: "Ken left Illinois for a simple reason: the state is devolving into anarchy. Senseless violence is now part of daily life in Chicago."

Griffin's letter to Citadel staff also made no mention of taxes as being a reason for the move. Instead, it rhapsodized about how Miami "embodies the American Dream embracing the possibilities of what can be achieved by a community working to build a future together."

Original post:

Ken Griffin spent $54 million to fight tax hike on the rich. Secret IRS data shows it's paying off - Salon

When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing; when you see that money is flowing to those who deal not in goods but in favours; when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work; and your laws dont protect you against them but protect them against you; when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice; you may know your society is doomed. Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 1957.

Stage 6 load-shedding has been forced on us by workers who are entitled, overpaid, underworked but have seen power abused everywhere else and have taken their monopoly position to extort an unaffordable increase. Never in the pre-1994 history of Eskom (formed in 1928, 60 years ago) did this happen. What changed? The only significant change was government policy cadre deployment, affirmative action and BEE.

Eskom has 10,000 too many employees; Transnet, the company that barely runs trains, employs 45,000 people. Most of these employees produce very little, a lot of them dont go to work, and when they do, they are disruptive and poorly managed by people who, like our president, cannot make a hard decision. They walk all over everything, and when things dont go their way, they throw their power around, because they can.

The leadership, institutional knowledge, work ethic and skills that carried these organisations has gone, retired or where made unwelcome just left. The ANC government has cut itself off from the skills that could help it implement its stupid policies, and now we all suffer.

I dont see private companies acting like this. Why? Because they have to compete and produce to survive.

Rob TiffinCape Town

JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.

See the original post:

LETTER: Thank cadre deployment and BEE for the mess - BusinessLIVE

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is a person of grievance harboring resentment, [and] anger, reported no less an authority than Hillary Clinton during an appearance last week on CBS. In ignoring Thomass ideas to smear his temperament, Clinton pulled from the same playbook leftists have been using against Thomas since even before his 1991 confirmation hearings.

The New York Times once called Thomas the Supreme Courts youngest and angriest. Times columnist Frank Rich accused him of rage and unreconstructed racial bitterness. His colleague Maureen Dowd has over the years variously described the justice as barking mad, dishonest, and angry, bitter, self-pitying. In the article, Why Is Justice Thomas So Angry?, CNN legal correspondent Jeffrey Toobin concludes, His fulminations are hurtful to the courts mission and reputation.

Forming something of a bitter consensus, his critics exhibit behavior every bit as intriguing as that they claim to condemn.

The best place for insight into Thomass anger is with the man himself. In his autobiography, My Grandfathers Son, Thomas says his bouts with anger in early life were at their most intense when, during his college years, he grew drunk with revolutionary rhetoric.

Black-nationalist ideas didnt suit him long, however. As his life evolved, so did his thinking. The hostility he once directed at a racist American society for mistreating blacks found new targets.

His personal anger can be interpreted in the context of its inverse relationship with happiness. Alongside his brother, Thomas was raised by their grandfather, Myers Anderson, whom, taking after their mom, they called Daddy. A self-employed deliveryman and farmer with an inexhaustible work ethic, Thomas portrays Anderson as akin to a drill instructor.

As the price of their shelter, the two boys labored so intensively in maintaining the farm that Clarence once reminded his grandfather slavery had ended. Not in my house, Anderson answers. Without hard work, self-reliance was impossible, Anderson taught the boys, and only through self-reliance can men earn their freedom. That was to be his gift to them.

He knew that to be truly free and participate fully in American life, Thomas writes, poor blacks had to have the tools to do for themselves. Very few would argue that, absent this individual liberty, personal happiness is even possible.

Thomas credits self-reliance for his success as a student. Raised Roman Catholic, his elementary school years were spent at St. John Vianney Minor Seminary, where he excelled athletically and academically. With plans of becoming a priest, he left Georgia to attend high school at Immaculate Conception Seminary in Missouri.

After a change of heart, he returned to Georgia, where one of his grammar-school nuns persuaded him to apply to Holy Cross. Before heading back north to attend college, a friend introduced him to The Communist Manifesto. This introduction to Marx soon blossomed into something else.

As a child Thomas had been taught that a mans life is his own responsibility, but according to Marxist theories of racial oppression, progress comes through revolution. To black nationalist Marxists, white racism explained every problem, Thomas says. It was the trump card that won every argument. He co-founded the Black Student Union, a leftist group whose advocacy included anti-Vietnam protesting.

At one BSU rally, he says that after the crowd worked itself into a frenzy with leftist sloganeering, We drank our way to Harvard Square, where our disorderly parade deteriorated into a full-scale riot. It went on through the night. After returning to campus early the next morning, Thomas became horrified: I had let myself be swept up by an angry mob for no good reason other than that I, too, was angry.

In the whirlwind of irrational violence, the BSU students, he realized, had perpetuated an unwelcome stereotype, that of the angry black man. This anger was sanctioned. Thomas describes black students flagrantly violating the student code of conduct and making tall demands, only for the administration to cave every time.

Black students also bonded through black-nationalist politics. Mixing radical politics with the entitlement mentality the administration encouraged quickly proved toxic. Already unprepared for living among whites, Thomas says, many of these unprepared black students gave up class in favor of drugs and cultlike Eastern religions. Others dropped or failed out.

In his senior year, Thomas read the uber-individualist books of Ayn Rand and began questioning the groupthink of his black peers. But to embark on free thinking meant making enemies of the government, the racists, the activists, the students, even daddy.

Yet free thinking yielded an immediate payoff for his temperament, for he was also being liberated of ideologically imposed passions that universities countenanced: I already knew that the rage with which we lived made it hard for us to think straight. Now I understood for the first time that we were expected to be full of rage. It was our role but I didnt want to play it anymore.

Graduating cum laude in English, Thomas was accepted to Harvard Law, but opted instead for Yale, which he felt was less conservative. Yale was further down the racial-preference road than Holy Cross, which cast suspicion over the entire black student body, as author John Greenya quotes Thomas: You had to prove yourself every day because the presumption was that you were dumb and didnt deserve to be there on merit.

To put his abilities beyond doubt, Thomas eschewed classes on civil rights and constitutional law in favor of corporate, tax, and antitrust law, seeking out professors with a reputation for hostility to blacks, where he strived still. Aspiring a return to his Atlanta-area hometown where an elite law degree could be of service to needy blacks, his plans were frustrated after every application was rejected, and his anger was born anew.

Prospective employers dismissed our grades and diplomas assuming we got both primarily because of preferential treatment, Thomas told the Macon Telegraph. Believing his Ivy League education was overvalued, he affixed a $.15 stamp to his degree, the value of a Yale education when it bore the taint of racial preference.

In The New Yorker, Toobin wonders whether Thomas overplays this notion, asserting perhaps these rejections stemmed from simple racism, the very thing affirmative action was designed to combat. Perhaps. But would an already racist employer be any less skeptical of a black applicant owing to admissions racial preferences?

At Yale, Thomas had worked for the social-services group New Haven Legal Assistance, where he encountered the beneficiaries of government welfare programs. Many of those seeking eligibility feigned poverty and victimization and called for assistance.

Thomas nonetheless believed that as American society condemned blacks to an outlook of scant hope, redressing social imbalances was legitimate government work. Around this time he happened to befriend future U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, who introduced Thomas to a new set of ideas.

In a debate over whether mandating helmets for motorcyclists was meritorious policy Thomas felt accident-related health care costs demanded such a rule Bolton asked him: Clarence, as a member of a group that has been treated shabbily by the majority in this country, why would you want to give the government more power over your personal life?

That stopped me cold, Thomas writes:

I thought of what Daddy had said when I asked him why hed never gone on public assistance. Because it takes away your manhood, he said. You do that and they can ask you questions about your life that are none of their business. They can come into your house when they want to, and they can tell you who else can come and go in your house. Daddy and John, I saw, were making the same point: real freedom meant independence from government intrusion, which in turn meant that you had to take responsibility for your own decisions. When the government assumes that responsibility, it takes away your freedom and wasnt freedom the very thing for which blacks in America were fighting?

Thomass worldview made a prodigal return to the real world. In many eyes, though, this made him a traitor, for it positioned him as an opponent of programs advertised as pro-black.

Thomas was soon recruited by Missouris attorney general, John Danforth, a Yale alum. Danforths Republican affiliation posed a near-crisis of conscience for a man whod recently voted for George McGovern and felt there was no such thing as a self-respecting black Republican.

After being assured of the same treatment as every other staffer, Thomas accepted a job offer, to the derision of his Yale classmates. While the position was intellectually satisfying, its meager salary soon sent him into the private sector, where he encountered the opposite dilemma: satisfying pay but meager opportunities for intellectual challenge.

Thomas then stumbled upon a book review of Thomas Sowells book, Race and Economics, which ended with this passage:

Perhaps the greatest dilemma in the attempts to raise ethnic minority income is that those methods which have historically proved successful self-reliance, work skills, education, business experience are all slow developing, while those methods which are more direct and immediate job quotas, charity, subsidies, preferential treatment tend to undermine self-reliance and pride of achievement in the long run. If the history of American ethnic groups shows anything, it is how large a role has been played by attitudes and particularly attitudes of self-reliance.

Finally, Thomas knew he wasnt alone: I felt like a thirsty man gulping down a glass of cool water. But with newfound confidence came another challenge: Danforth had recently been elected Missouris junior senator and wanted Thomas to join his staff. A job that could be used to benefit other people was appealing, but Thomas knew his heretical thinking would make him a target in scandal-hungry D.C.

Not long into his tenure on the Hill, the Reagan administration asked if Thomas would serve as the assistant secretary for civil rights in the Department of Education. He almost didnt. Washington Post reporter Juan Williams had recently published an article quoting Thomas as asserting welfare ruins blacks, mentioning his sisters experience. The torrent of criticism that followed made him think twice about accepting a prominent executive branch position.

Having felt the lash of public criticism, I questioned whether I had the strength or the courage to stand in the eye of the howling storm that surrounded civil-rights policies, he writes.

He was likewise beset when later nominated to lead the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. As chairman, Thomas oversaw a massive increase in anti-discrimination litigation, and ideologically driven attacks against his character intensified. These began exacting a toll, especially as a longstanding fondness for alcohol turned into a form of escapism. He even nursed thoughts of suicide, Thomas writes:

I [asked] myself whether I might do better to back away from my political beliefs. Life, I knew, would be so much easier if I went along with whatever was popular. What were my principles really worth to me? As I gazed out my office window at the Potomac River, the answer came instinctively: Theyre worth my life. I spoke the words out loud, knowing at once that they were true.

When Thomas was later offered the nomination for Supreme Court justice, he knew it meant subjecting himself to abuse for not thinking as white senators thought black men should. He says he accepted only out of loyalty to then-President George H.W. Bush: By then Id shed the last of my illusions about white liberals: I knew that their broad-mindedness stopped well short of tolerating blacks who disagreed with them.

The campaign against him featured charges of tax fraud, Confederate sympathies, anti-Semitism, patronizing a cult-like church, and, of course, sexual harassment. These wild allegations obscured the motivation behind the campaign. According to Thomas: I refused to bow to the superior wisdom of the white liberals who thought they knew what was better for blacks. Since I didnt know my place, I had to be put down.

For noting the correlation between welfare services and an entitlement mentality, Thomas has endured beyond-the-pale personal attacks. After defending himself against a Playboy article (Reagan and the Revival of Racism) with a letter to the editor, the articles white author responded: As a Southerner, Mr. Thomas is surely familiar with those chicken-eating preachers who gladly parroted the segregationists line in exchange for a few crumbs from the white mans table. Hes one of the few left in captivity.

Not even civil-rights leaders criticized this racist broadside. What I found inexplicable, Thomas writes, was that so many of the people who went out of their way to tell me how strongly they disapproved of my views seemed to think that the mere act of pointing out the human damage caused by welfare policies was wrong in and of itself. Would they have felt the same way if Id said that I was opposed to drunk driving because my sister had been hit by a drunk driver?

In Grutter v. Bollinger, a 2003 Supreme Court case that upheld the constitutionality of the University of Michigan Law Schools admissions policies that favored some races over others, Thomas issued a dissent imbued with personal experience:

The majority of blacks are admitted to the Law School because of discrimination, and because of this policy all are tarred as undeserving. This problem of stigma does not depend on determinacy as to whether those stigmatized are actually the beneficiaries of racial discrimination. When blacks take positions in the highest places of government, industry, or academia, it is an open question today whether their skin color played a part in their advancement. The question itself is the stigma because either racial discrimination did play a role, in which case the person may be deemed otherwise unqualified, or it did not, in which case asking the question itself unfairly marks those blacks who would succeed without discrimination.

After this decision New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd said Thomass failure to appreciate racial preferences was hypocritical: Its impossible not to be disgusted at someone who could benefit so much from affirmative action and then pull up the ladder after himself. Toobin abused Thomas as a race traitor for his intense resentment of efforts to help African-Americans.

In 2002, five black law professors at the University of North Carolina boycotted a Thomas appearance, claiming: [A]s a justice, he not only engages in acts that harm other African Americans like himself, but also gives aid, comfort, and racial legitimacy to acts and doctrines of others that harm African Americans unlike himself that is, those who have not yet reaped the benefits of civil rights laws, including affirmative action, and who have not yet received the benefits of the white-conservative sponsorships that now empower him.

How could good-faith efforts at furthering blacks progress be met with such derision? Much of it stems from his critics perception of what motivates his opposition to their social-engineering experiments. Toobin, Dowd, and others ascribe this heterodoxy to a perceived servility to powerful conservative elites.

Dowd, imagining herself as Thomas, wrote of his opinion in Bush v. Gore: I used to have grave reservations about working at white institutions, subject to the whims of white superiors. But when Poppys whim was to crown his son one of those privileged Yale legacy types I always resented I had to repay The Man for putting me on the court even though I was neither qualified nor honest But having the power to carjack the presidency and control the fate of the country did give me that old X-rated tingle.

Others interpret Thomas as an ideological devotee to the take-it-as-it-comes judicial philosophy sometimes called originalism a notion hed reject.

A philosophy that is imposed from without instead of arising organically from day-to-day engagement with the law isnt worth having, he writes. Such a philosophy runs the risk of becoming an ideology, and Id spent much of my adult life shying away from abstract ideological theories that served only to obscure the reality of life as its lived.

Still, Thomass Supreme Court career is often blithely dismissed as the work of his ideological puppeteer, Scalia, supposedly because they often vote alike. In fact, according to ABC legal correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburgs book Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story for Control of the United States Supreme Court, it is Scalia who often changed his opinions to more closely reflect Thomass.

In 2005, University of Iowa Law Professor Angela Onwuachi-Willig reported the courts leftist justices were more likely to vote alike than Thomas and Scalia did, with Justice Ginsburg agreeing in full with Justice Souter 85% of the time, Justice Souter agreeing with Justice Stevens 77% of the time, and Justice OConnor agreeing with Chief Justice Rehnquist 79% of the time while Justice Thomas and Justice Scalia agreed in full only 73% of time.

This notion that blacks choose not to think for themselves is not entirely foreign to these critics; The Timess Dowd and Rich have joked that blacks who spoke at the Republican 2000 convention participated in a minstrel show.

Thomass own explanation for his ideas is less conspiratorial. He thinks too many of these policies are premised on the idea that blacks are an inferior race. In 1995, the Supreme Court heard Missouri v. Jenkins, where the Kansas City school district was attempting to, in part, correct racial imbalances by opening schools catering to whites in a neighborhood they had long ago abandoned. In a concurring opinion, Thomas writes:

It never ceases to amaze me that the courts are willing to assume that anything that is predominately black must be inferior. Instead of focusing on remedying the harm done to those black schoolchildren injured by segregation, the District Court here sought to convert the Kansas City, Missouri, School District (KCMSD) into a magnet district that would reverse the white flight caused by desegregation. Racial isolation itself not a harm; only state-enforced segregation is. After all, if separation is a harm, and if integration therefore is the only way that blacks can receive a proper education, then there must be something inferior about blacks. Under this theory, segregation injures blacks because blacks, when left on their own, cannot achieve.

Its unclear whether affirmative action supporters professed ideal of racial equality better representstheir actual thinking than preferences implications of black inferiority. President Biden certainly didnt help the former case when he speculated aloud to The Washington Post about why Iowas public schools outperform D.C.s: Theres less than 1 percent of the population of Iowa that is African American. There is probably less than 4 or 5 percent that are minorities. What is in Washington? So look, it goes back to what you start off with, what youre dealing with. More recently Biden said, Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.

The preoccupation with means over ends exacts a toll on blacks, says Thomas. By pursuing busing programs meant to intermix students usually at the expense of quality education, blacks are essentially being used as guinea pigs in the experiments of white social scientists. This not only is demoralizing, but suggests that without whites, blacks are hopeless.

Once more, blacks become reliant on whites, and a theory that tacitly assumes black inferiority helps make it real. A 2019 Pew Research Center poll finds that, with the Great Society 57 years deep, black Americans are historically pessimistic, with more than 80 percent viewing their race as an impediment. Curiously, the more educated the respondent, the more likely he was to see his race as an obstacle, and half say America will never achieve racial equity.

Whites, too, see less progress, per Pew, but are twice as likely to be optimistic. This suggests efforts at racial redress atone for white guilt twice as well as they do boosting black progress. For this reason, Thomas sometimes says, racial preferences are intended more for their sponsors than their recipients.

Perhaps conventional repulsion for Republicans explains why more blacks havent had similar re-appraisals to the governments efforts to improve their lot. While skepticism of government social work may well be an aspect of conservative political philosophy, for Thomas, its merely an affirmation of his lifes experiences. He is conservative, in other words, because he is black.

And it no longer matters what anybody says, a declaration he made in a 1998 Memphis speech. Speaking before the National Bar Association, a black lawyers group, Thomas did not apologize for his heretical beliefs. Instead, he said this:

I have come here today, not in anger or to anger, though my mere presence has been sufficient, obviously, to anger some. Nor have I come to defend my views, but rather to assert my right to think for myself, to refuse to have my ideas assigned to me as though I was an intellectual slave because Im black. I come to state that I am a man, free to think for myself and do as I please. I have come to assert that I am a judge and I will not be consigned the unquestioned opinions of others.

This attitude is clearly unhelpful to those promoting preferences. Thomas, after all, is right: Racial preferences tar reputations. He has achieved the uttermost prominence, yet no matter what he achieves, it seems, his critics still argue he owes everything to preferences.

Dowd began an article, He knew he could not make a powerful legal argument against racial preferences, given the fact that he got into Yale Law School and got picked for the Supreme Court thanks to his race. Of Thomass nomination to the EEOC, Toobin says, Though Thomas doesnt say so directly, its clear he was given the job because he was black.

Stripping pride from a mans achievements is certainly an indecent thing. One wonders how Toobin would feel if it were constantly alleged that the only reason he got his job at CNN was because hes a dyed-blue-in-the-wool Democrat. And how would Dowd respond to accusations that the only reason she owns premier real estate on The New York Times editorial page is because shes a woman?

This claim effectively imparts ownership of racial-preference recipients achievements to those administering these programs. If thats the choice diminished personal sovereignty, or liberty Thomas would rather be free, even if it means he fails. This is why Thomas began his Grutter v. Michigan opinion with a quote from his hero, Frederick Douglass:

Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! [Y]our interference is doing him positive injury.

Thomass life has been a struggle to stand alone, and he knows there are others. Hes long nursed an urge to return to Georgia and help his old neighborhood. At a book-signing party, he was asked whether hed prefer any job over his current assignment. He could think of only one: a small or medium-sized business somewhere in the South where he could be a part of my community.

Thomas has often passed up these opportunities on the belief that positions of greater prominence held greater capacity for reform. Yet each step has met ever greater condemnation sometimes infected with accusations of racial traitorship, always leading to the same regrettable conclusion: Black minds arent ready to be free.

But having untangled himself from the pull-strings of racial groupthink, leftist social dogma, political ideology, and popular opinion, Thomas was recently able to proclaim himself the freest man on the court. Its this, his intellectual emancipation, that most infuriates his leftist critics. In proving their entire worldview fraudulent, Thomas continues to attract racist abuse because thats all they have left to hurl.

Witnessing the way white progressives resort to racism the moment a black man breaks free from his intellectual shackles, surely younger black thinkers will realize theres no value in accepting a set of beliefs simply because they were born a certain race. That would surely make Justice Thomas happy.

Tom Elliott is the founder and editor of Grabien. Follow him on Twitter @tomselliott.

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Why The Racist Left Smears Clarence Thomas As An 'Angry Black Man' - The Federalist